Illuminate
by Covetedoutcomes
Summary: Eli Goldsworthy makes the decision to end his life one evening. As he wanders out in the middle of traffic, recklessly attempting to get hit by a car, the last thing he expects is for his plans to be thwarted. Least of all, he has no way of anticipating the way her eyes would work their way under his skin, mending him in ways other people never could.
1. Fate

**I can't honestly say I know what this story is, or where it's headed. I just wanted to write it. I'm still working on BIT, this is just a small side project. **

**It's titled after an album by the band Lydia, and every chapter will be named after a song by them. I don't own Lydia and I'll never claim to. **

**Enjoy. Reviews make my day.**

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_Place me on your scene and I'll take  
Everything that you ever said to me  
No, it wasn't just words  
Day after day after day  
I call that fate_

It was there one moment, and just as seamlessly, it wasn't the next.

All the static that usually kept him grounded was gone, lost for the time being. And in just a few seconds – that was all it took – it all felt like it had been sapped from him. The will to live, or survive, whichever you want to call it. Either way, it was entirely lacking in him.

His footsteps meant nothing, his destination suddenly lacking purpose. His breaths were only taken because his body demanded they were.

If ever Eli wished to kill himself, it was then.

Still, he didn't feel an absence. It wasn't as though he was sweeping the cobwebs out of his own brain. It was more like opening up a space for apathy to take root, and that was just what happened.

His steps were all muscle memory, simply walking back to his house. If anyone had seen him from the road, they would have noticed his ambling down the street and just assumed it was a young man who was heading back from wherever, that nothing momentous, remarkable or horrifying was about to happen to him.

But inside, Eli could feel it brewing, spinning itself together even if it wasn't a conscious act on his part.

His stomach had been twisted into permanent knots for hours, the result of a tiring argument with his dad. He always won, his logic always beat Eli's out and left him feeling an awful lot like a fool. That didn't matter much anymore, but he could still feel the stinging all over his arms from the damage the argument had done. He didn't need to hold the blade to his arm, Eli did that all on his own. But his words helped dig the blade into the boy's flesh.

For a short while after, he felt a sense of ease, some small semblance of inner peace beginning to take root in him. The small rational part of his mind knew what it was, and where it was leading. Each slap of his shoe against the pavement marked one of the last ones he would take. The rush of inner peace was what most felt when they were readying themselves to die.

No act of the fictitious God he didn't even believe in would take him, no. He was the master of his own destiny, and keeping that in mind, he would have the liberty, the great honor of ending his own life.

As weariness began to plague his body, he ached for a nap. A long, warm nap under the thickest of blankets. Had he gone home, he might have gotten just that. Perhaps with the occasional yell from his father thrown in the mix, but it would have sufficed under normal circumstances. Had he not been at the end of his rope, Eli wouldn't have felt so all-knowing, so goddamn greedy for power over his own existence.

He turned down a street he wasn't terribly familiar with, only knowing it for its lack of artificial, albeit dim, streetlights, and its preposterous amount of traffic. How so many people could be traveling on one poorly lit street at any given time was beyond him. The flow of cars was seemingly endless as he traversed on, his movements still as mechanical as they had been before.

It was perfect, he decided.

He could already see his body, splayed out smack dab in the middle of the yellow lines. The red would run from his veins and every broken piece of his body, bleeding out, almost in atonement. For every single wrong thing he'd done over the seventeen years he'd been alive.

For meeting Julia and opening her up to her own demise. For lulling her into a safety even _he_ had been naive enough to believe he could provide. For being a burden to his father, only serving as a decent verbal punching bag when the mood struck. For not being enough to his mother. So little and so insignificant that she somehow found it in her to up and leave.

For every last sorry piece of shit he was made up of. For every mistake he'd made and couldn't make up for.

He almost chuckled out loud at the thought of who would hear the news first. How the house phone might ring, but Bullfrog would inevitably be sleeping, his own snoring drowning out the irksome droning of the phone.

Maybe a stranger would see him in such a mangled state and, in a panic, dial 911, wincing away slightly as they looked between the paused traffic and his grotesquely damaged body. Finally his outsides would resemble what was in.

Perhaps someone would manage to reach Cece, wherever she was, and alert her that her son had taken his own life. He wondered if she would shed any tears or sit there in unfazed amusement. The moment she stepped left their home years before Eli knew he was dead to her already. The absence of his physical body roaming the Earth wouldn't be any different. She'd already signed off on him long ago.

Beyond those instances, he couldn't imagine who could possibly find him. A stranger, his father, or another woman who felt like a stranger but by blood and legality, took on the title of his mother. The choices weren't appealing in the least but what did he care? He would be one with the pavement, his bones crushed against the road as tires ran over his body. His say in the matter was irrelevant no matter what.

He couldn't even imagine the crunch that his bones might elicit should the tires of a rather large truck or SUV roll him over.

All of this seemed very amusing to him now, a wide smile spreading across his chapped lips as he wandered on. The road only lasted a mile or so more. If he didn't do it before he hit the next sign marking the next street, he wouldn't do it at all. There was still the slightest bit of cowardice left in him. While every after school special and therapist he'd seen had told him "It's brave not to commit suicide, it's brave to _not _to go through with it." he bitterly disagreed. He was a selfish bastard for continuing to exist when he served no purpose. He was stealing the air from people more worthy of breathing, hogging the time of individuals who didn't even want to speak to him. Over the course of a year, Eli had become a waste of space.

Now, his body felt limp and tired. It begged to retire itself to nothingness. He couldn't forsake his attachment to the notion that nothing existed beyond one's death. The idea was so firmly lodged in his mind that even within the moments before his death, he couldn't bring himself to believe in a higher power. What kind of God would have pity on him anyway, if one existed? After the ruination he'd so seamlessly created over the course of his life, after how quickly he'd made a mockery of his own hopes and dreams, why would anyone so powerful cast a sympathetic gaze on him? He didn't deserve it – it was that simple. If such a being did exist, Eli was convinced that they were leading his footsteps, all but pushing him into the heavy flow of traffic.

The moment couldn't be delayed any further. The distinct pulsing in his chest, the drumming beneath his ribcage was beginning to tucker out. Even his own organs were giving up on him, he mused. His lungs felt heavy, caving with each labored breath he forced inside.

Turning towards the road, he stopped short, his heels sitting atop the curb. The night sky had fallen over them like a blanket hours before, though Eli couldn't remember exactly what time it was now. But it was plenty dark enough that the headlights on each car nearly blinded him, watching as they sped to and fro.

It took one dauntless step forward to shove himself out into traffic. To trust anyone on that road to do him in. Truly, whoever happened to mow over his body would be his savior, even if he never got the chance to tell them. Now, thinking about it, he realized he hadn't even written out an official suicide note. The notion had always seemed over-romanticized to him anyway. Who would want to read his musings as he readied himself for the last night of his life? Who, when he really pondered it, would actually give a damn?

The fact that he came up empty on names answered his question easily.

His father's birthday was in ten days, he realized. But that wouldn't matter much, on the whole. Perhaps offing himself would serve as a better present than any halfhearted gift card could be. A death certificate to mount proudly on his wall; the relieving of the constant nuisance that took residence in the upstairs bedroom of his house. Again, Eli was merely wasted space. He knew it all too well.

In four weeks, fours weeks and a day to be exact, it would be the anniversary of the day that Julia met this same fate, ironically enough. Though he knew she never would have taken her own life. For all her inner struggles and her tempestuous relationship with her mother, she never would have taken this way out willingly. The fact that he was seeking a similar out would have disgusted her. She would spit upon his corpse had she been around to do it. But that was just the thing; she wasn't around. No one was there to drag Eli by his collar away from the road.

Most of the drivers were giving him puzzled looks, expecting him to cross the road or barely even noticing him at all. Clad in black, without even a sliver of colorful clothing to make him show up against the night, most drivers didn't pay him any mind. He blended in with his surroundings, much to his relief. Just as much as he didn't want to see it coming, he didn't want the driver to either.

For posterity, or some other equally as ridiculous and self-defeating purpose, he sucked in one last breath, hoping it would cleanse him of his inner blackness. Of the things he was too ashamed to admit to anyone. It had to be a good last one. One that would tide his body over until the end hit him.

Someone would peel him off the road, a bloody mess, and they'd eventually see the scars littering his arms.

Someone would have to pick through his belongings that he had on him. Only a wallet. And inside, they'd find his ID.

Elijah Lucas Goldsworthy, born May 10th, 1992. Brown hair, green eyes. Blood type AB.

They'd see the picture of Julia sitting comfortably on the inside of it, her Mona Lisa smile staring them daringly in the face as they tried to make heads or tails of the broken boy beneath them.

Someone would have to claw through his room eventually, scoffing haughtily at the clutter and disarray he'd managed to build up over the last year or so. They wouldn't understand the significance of the things he'd saved. How they all went back to her somehow. They wouldn't comprehend how he'd managed to acquire so many notebooks and filled them all with writing. And they wouldn't care.

That was the thing Eli had realized most about other people: they just didn't give a shit.

He reserved that same right in this moment, to not give a shit. Not a one.

It was as if his own legs didn't belong to him as he let one last car pass, then rushing out to the middle of the road. His eyes were secured behind his lids, just so he wouldn't have to witness any of it. The last visual memory he had couldn't be that. He wanted it to be her raven hair. The way her mouth twisted to one side before she said something especially snarky, or the way her skin felt when it was pressed against his. Julia was his first and last thought every single day. His death should be no different, he reasoned...

"Kid! What the _fuck_ are you doing?" Suddenly his eyes shot open in horror. _No, no, no, no_. This wasn't supposed to be happening. His body was already supposed to be mowed over, his blood painting the road in the most ironic, tragic, and perhaps even award winning of ways.

But staring him in the face was a man behind the wheel, blaring down on his horn crossly. "Get the fuck out of he road! Are you trying to get yourself killed?" he yelled out, rolling down his window and reaching his head around to see him.

Eli couldn't help but laugh at the accuracy of his question, the undulation in his laughter shaking even him. It didn't feel like a voice he owned. In fact, this all felt like borrowed time. He knew, he wasn't supposed to be alive. His plan had gone terribly awry.

Facing the vehicle, he shook his head.

"No? No what, kid? You gotta get out of the road." Cars behind this man's were slamming down on their horns, eager to get back on the road and go nowhere. One of them, he was convinced, would be his saving grace. One would mow over his body if not from purely accidental means, then just to get the hell home, treating him like the insignificant blockade he was.

The man stared Eli down, willing him to budge but his feet felt permanently rooted into the path. Choosing instead the path of least resistance, the man parked his car, the next one pulling up right in front of Eli. This would be it. They wouldn't pause, halted by their own meager excuse for a conscience.

But when they did in fact stop, slamming down on their horn in an even angrier manner than the first man had, Eli grit his teeth together. He should have slit his wrists. Or flung himself from a bridge. Something that wouldn't have denied him the quiet bliss of death. This was far too complicated, and it was becoming more theatrical than cathartic as the moments wore on.

Suddenly he felt his body being jerked from the road. He fought it off, flailing his arms about and attempting to slap away whatever force was keeping him from his fate. Soon traffic resumed as if it hadn't been disturbed at all, life carrying on in much the same manner as it had before his stunt.

"Calm down! You need to calm down!" that same voice from the car pleaded with him, the man's arms winding around Eli's thrashing form.

"Let me go!" Eli rasped, desperate to free himself from this man's clutches. This man who shouldn't have cared at all. No one else did, why was a stranger suddenly showing him the least bit of compassion? It was too late. Even if he wasn't dead in the middle of the street, his will to live was already extinguished. That last spark had already been dimmed, dulled out beneath the weight of his mistakes and regrets. No one else would fully understand it, which was why they denied him the mercy of doing him in. Any reasonable, feeling human being would have allowed him at least that bit of peace.

Keeping a vice grip on his frame, the man finally got him to simmer down, Eli's chest heaving violently as he stared at the sidewalk beneath them. "Were you trying to kill yourself?" the man asked, his tone even. It didn't betray any anxiety, if he had any to speak of. It felt like a clerical question. As though he was asking him if he'd ever smoked, or if he was sexually active. It was a question of menial importance and little consequence. So he answered honestly.

"_Yes_." he stated derisively, bitter over the fact that he'd been denied his chance to do just that. Yet again, his own stupidity was winning out, screwing over what should have been the most foolproof of plans. Killing oneself shouldn't have to be so methodical, he figured. But apparently, it was. He knew as soon as he broke loose from this man, he'd be back to the drawing board.

But he felt himself being dragged to the man's car, his thrashing beginning once again. "You need to go to a hospital, son." he spat out firmly, somehow still keeping a hold of Eli despite his attempts to break free.

"_No_. No, let me go!" he shouted, all but clawing at the man's eyes. At that, the man finally let go a bit, but held onto his arms.

"I _will not_ be responsible for your death, do you understand?" the man dared to shout back, sobering Eli up for a moment. He couldn't draw up a reply immediately and it allowed the man the ability to fit in a few words edgewise. "I know you might feel like everything is hopeless right now, but I promise, it can get better."

It was only then that Eli saw the man, beforehand not even making an attempt to observe him. He was balding, some hair swept over his bare scalp in a lame attempt to mask it. Under his eyes were heavy bags, the past thirty or so years perhaps hanging sullenly beneath dulled, greyish blue orbs.

It made him wonder who really had it worse – him, or the man standing before him.

Shaking his head, Eli felt his eyes beginning to sting. He was tired of people swearing that it "gets better". That there was a brilliant,forgiving light waiting at the end of a tiring tunnel, if only he'd wait around long enough to see it for himself. That suicide was a _permanent solution to a temporary problem_.

"I don't care." he spoke honestly, his voice only coming out as a choked sob as he looked helplessly to the man. At this rate, there was no way he'd be able to find his death on the street. He wondered if he even had the energy to end his life at all tonight. Fatigue was winning out, against his better judgment.

The man sighed out either in desperation or exasperation, Eli couldn't tell which. "Son, please, just come with me. Get in the car, let me get you somewhere safe. You need to get checked out at the hospital. You don't look good, besides the fact that you just tried to become roadkill." He managed a soft chuckle at his own offbeat humor but Eli remained stoic, his teeth grit together.

He didn't speak a word as he reluctantly entered the man's car, slipping himself into the back seat. His frame shook a bit as the man slammed the door shut, then hastily maneuvering back around to the driver's side door.

It wasn't until he was inside that he realized someone had even been in the passenger's seat. In the pitch blackness of the night, he could only see the driver's head poking out of the window.

As they turned to face him, the only thing he could see was _blue_. A seemingly endless, tranquil blue that managed to work past his own unrelenting thoughts for a moment. The girl before him didn't say a word as they exchanged a silent stare, her mouth hung agape as she took in his rattled, jolted self.

She had the most gentle pair of eyes in the world, Eli thought. They had the power to quiet his mind when nothing else could.

"See? You even scared the living daylights out of my daughter." the man huffed out as he entered the vehicle, clicking the automatic locks for the doors so that Eli wouldn't try to spring out on his own.

Glancing back to the young girl sitting up front, he noticed how her cheeks were stained with tears, her face awash in a furious red hue, her bottom lip quivering.

This girl was crying for him. For his sorry ass, his miserable excuse for a life. As if he deserved it.

Eli couldn't conjure up a sentence for the life of him, his words stuck in his dry throat. He couldn't say a thing, for fear of making the girl cry even more. He didn't know her, but he couldn't bear to see her in pain. Not those gentle, unshielded eyes. He'd already caused enough heartbreak in his life. She didn't need to be added to that ever growing list.

He might have tried to escape the car if not for the fact that she was there. As the vehicle started up and they drove down that same road he tried to end his life on, Eli swallowed hard. Still the girl hadn't let her gaze leave his, but she hadn't said anything either. Feeling uncomfortable, he toyed absentmindedly with his hands.

It was only then that the man realized the girl, presumably his daughter, had been staring Eli down in a fixated manner, her eyes still brimming with unshed tears. "Clare, face forward." he chastised, glancing back at Eli before returning his focus to the road.

_Clare. What a fitting name_, he thought.

Out of knee-jerk reaction, she did, facing forward in her seat. Despite this, she managed to sneak a few glances at the boy in the backseat, even offering him a weak smile at one point.

It thawed the ice in Eli's chest at once. He couldn't even attempt to describe the soothing sensation this girl was able to shoot into his veins. Her sweet demeanor, those auburn curls bouncing around either side of her face as the car sped onward, it all seeped under his skin. She was a remedy, if he'd ever encountered one.

The only thing that scared him more than this impending visit to the hospital was being torn away from her kind gaze. He held onto it helplessly like a lifeline for the entirety of the ride there.


	2. Hospital

**Thanks for the reviews/reads I got on the first chapter! I'm feeling really inspired to press forward with this story. Strike while the iron is hot, that sort of thing. **

**Again, it's titled after a Lydia song and no, I do not own the band. **

**Though I do suggest you listen to their album_ Illuminate_ while reading through this story. I'll occasionally be adding in song titles that aren't from the album, but others by them. Either way, they're musical genius and you'd be wise to check them out. **

**Shameless promotion of one of my favorite bands aside, here's Chapter 2. It's a lengthy one, you've been warned. **

**Reviews are strongly encouraged. They make me smile. **

**Enjoy.**

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_So I've been sleeping with this silence in my mind_

_And all I see scares me  
And no one knows it, but she, she saved me _

Clare couldn't help but look back occasionally as her father's car ambled down the road. It was the same, safe vehicle he drove her to school in every morning. It was the same one that he'd even used when she was born, to rush her mother to this same hospital that she imagined they were heading to now. Though it was cracked in spots and the glove compartment shot open when they went over especially significant bumps in the road, it was like an extension of her own home. Nothing scary could happen within the walls, no trouble encountering them while they drove.

But this boy didn't look the least bit safe. His skin tone was anemic seeming, giving him an almost cadaverous appearance. Where he'd been all night, she couldn't fathom. The cold had seeped into his bones hours before, she assumed, judging by the way his body trembled. She could almost hear his heart pounding in his chest, letting it echo out in the car. She imagined his ribs were nimble, barely capable of keeping the thundering beast where it belonged.

He looked like someone who had been hurting for far, far too long. It made Clare's chest ache.

Her parents had always told her that she was too nosy, too much of a busybody at times for her own good. Whether it was neighbors moving in next door or the things going on in her own household, the girl's curiosity was instantly piqued with the smallest bit of encouragement. While her mother and father chided her for it, she never meant any harm. Call it a bleeding heart, but Clare Edwards couldn't help getting herself tangled up in other people's affairs. Sometimes she could easily blame it on her deep rooted Christian morals. Every teaching that had ever been beaten and battered into her malleable young head was still stuck with her, at sixteen. Clare was every bit as pure hearted to this day as she had been coming out of the womb.

Keeping with that, seeing someone struggling so blatantly right before her eyes didn't sit well with her.

She could still feel the jarring in her own chest as his blackened figure appeared before their car, the sound of her father scrambling to the brake. Had he hesitated even a moment, the boy would be no more. The thought of him reaching the end of his life in such a tragic manner, at her father's hand, no less, chilled her to the bone.

It made her look back at the boy again, just to make sure he was there. That he hadn't flung himself out a window somehow. It was all paranoia, she knew. As though the boy's nerves were somehow transferring to her. The moment he entered the car, he brought with him a stagnant wall of anxiety. His mood was palpable, easily making her fall victim to it as well. While a part of her almost felt oppressed by the lingering mood, she was insistent on keeping her optimism afloat.

"I.." she started, almost in shock that her voice managed to ring out at all. His eyes were on her now, waiting for her to complete her thought. She almost crumbled under the intensity of them, the deep green shaking her up. It was in her nature to grow flustered quickly but this – _this_ was a bit more than ridiculous. Her hand reached for the headrest of her seat, clutching the fabric in her fingers as though it would help keep them all grounded. The boy wasn't the only one with frayed nerves anymore.

"I'm glad you're here, right now. That you're okay."

"Well, that makes one of us." he replied in a clipped manner, throwing Clare off guard. He'd just attempted to end his life, with little success, luckily, and he was already working to harness sarcasm? She furrowed her brows at him skeptically, not buying his aloof retort for a moment. It had to be a defense mechanism.

Pushing a tousled curl behind her own ear, she cleared her throat, looking down as she spoke, "Y-you couldn't have really wanted to die, could you? I mean, that's the end of everything. You have no idea what's in store for the rest of your life. It would be...tragic to let that slip from your grasp." She felt as though she was talking to herself, doubting that the boy would even pay her any mind.

When she was met with silence, she realized she'd been proven correct. He was looking out the window now, his jaw clenched tightly, fists curled at his sides. Her heart was slowly but surely sinking in her chest. For whatever reason, one she couldn't conjure up, she wanted to get through to this boy. It wasn't her place to reach him, her conscience reminded her. For all she knew, he might have had every reason in the world to throw his life away. She didn't know the first thing about this boy. Regardless of this fact, she couldn't help but want to envelop him in whatever kindness she could extend.

"Clarebear, I told you to face forward. Don't speak to him." her father reiterated, this time not glancing back at Eli but pressing down a little harder on the gas pedal.

_Don't speak to him. _

_As though he was rabid. Or prone to strike out at any given moment. Like he was a wild animal_, Clare mused, rolling her eyes dramatically.

_He's just a lost boy, he's lost his way._ Clare was sure of the fact. The look on his face, the vacancy of his stare and his muted replies were enough to convince her. Her father could be callous sometimes, she would be the first to admit. He didn't have the best opinion of those with mental illnesses, which, clearly this boy had some form of if he was itching to become one with the pavement on that street.

Seeing her father dragging the emotionally unhinged adolescent into the car had been a shock to her. Normally he would have gone on about how it wasn't his problem, how he didn't feel the need to take on charity cases much like her mother and even Clare did. But this one time, he seemed to make an exception. While it crossed Clare's mind to inquire as to why, she zipped her lips. This wasn't the right time or place. Most of all, she didn't want to dissuade him of this decision. Clearly, the boy did need medical attention, even if he was reluctant to see it himself.

For the rest of the ride, Clare attempted to keep her eyes on the rolling road before them, her eyes boring absentmindedly into the yellow lines. It all felt like a blur, a tiny segment of another person's life that she was merely granted temporary access to. Things like this – nearly witnessing a suicide – didn't happen to her. Or if they did, her family was good at shielding her from it. Clare knew it had gotten to the point where she could barely even handle a undiluted dose of reality. She didn't like the feeling of her idealistic illusions being shattered all around her, left to stand in the broken glass and futilely, pick up the pieces. Some people couldn't be repaired, she knew. But other times, she couldn't help but hope against hope for them anyway.

Her attention had drifted by the time her father parked the car, but the abrupt halt brought her back to the present. Listening as he puffed out a short breath, he turned back towards the boy. "I'm bringing you inside, got it? I'm staying with you until one of you parents gets here. I don't want to risk having you just leave."

To that, the boy let out a snort, his brow cocked skeptically. Clare narrowed her own brows at him, still not comprehending his angle at all. "Good luck reaching my dad. You should have left me at the side of the road." he spat out, his tone harsh. She could practically feel the venom leaking out from his words. A small cringe settled on her face, despite her attempts to remain stoic no matter what he came out with. He was unstable; she couldn't truly hold him accountable for anything he said.

At the sight of her facial expression, she realized he'd shrunken down a bit himself, suddenly sitting back and slouching a bit in his seat. She couldn't figure out why he'd reacted in such a way, but felt grateful for it. The tension around them could be cut with even the dullest of knives.

"Yeah well," her father spoke again, grabbing his cell phone from the center console and unbuckling his seat belt, "I'm not like other people, alright? Maybe everyone else could have ignored you, but I won't be able to sleep at night if I'm wondering whether or not you're dead." Clare paused, her father's tone stirring up her natural inclination to tear up again. Imagining the boy dead was all she could do while her father had struggled to get him inside the car, the memory of him throwing himself right before their headlights still fresh in her mind.

As her father turned towards her, Clare met his eyes. "I need you to stay here, okay? I hope I won't be gone long but-"

"No! I'm going in too!" she interjected, shaking her head in vehement opposition to his plan. "You can't just leave me in the parking lot. You don't know how long it'll take for his parents to get here. It could be hours." The reasons she had proposed weren't truly serving as her motivation to enter the hospital with them. Turning to look at the boy, she knew her real motives had been revealed, green and blue meeting for the briefest of seconds.

Another thing her father lacked was patience. Randall Edwards had never been known as an especially nurturing man, though he definitely cared deep down. Should she push too hard, she knew he would lock her inside without another word of dispute. "We don't know what he's capable of." he gritted out, in a failing attempt to speak quietly to Clare, so the boy wouldn't overhear.

Before Clare could lift her jaw back up and recover from the audacity of his statement, laughter from the boy broke through. Boisterous, smart aleck laughter leaving his lips. "I'm not about to attack your daughter, sir. I do have some self-control, you know." His tone was still sharp, lacking entirely in mildness, but there was a definite sincerity to it. Clare felt as though she could take him at his word, if nothing else.

Locking eyes with her father, she could see the fight leaving him. "Dad, I'll be fine. I'd rather not waste away in the car. Please let me come with you?" A moment or two passed, his eyes fluttering closed in annoyance before he nodded. She figured this all must have seemed very bizarre to the boy, having no prior knowledge of their dynamics, or even who they were. This, after all, was about getting him the help he needed. Perhaps it was selfish of her to be arguing with her dad over something so trivial while his world was probably collapsing all around him. But the idea of him entering that overly sterile, ammonia scented environment without someone beside him- someone other than her overly disciplinary father- made her stomach knot up.

"You stay in the backseat for a moment, until I come and get you, alright?" he father stated firmly, leaving the boy to shrug his shoulders dismissively. He exited the car, Clare doing the same and locking her door. Realizing her father was letting him out on his side, she scurried over quickly, flinching back as she saw the boy attempting to fend him off again.

"I swear to fucking god, stop trying to put a leash on me!" Now that she could see him standing right before her, Clare could spot out his gaunt features, how malnourished he looked. The dull throbbing in her stomach doubled in intensity as her father let go of his arm, then shaking his head.

"You tried to run off before, who says you won't do it again?"

"I'm not a prisoner. You're lucky I even got in the goddamn car."

Clare wasn't even sure what she was doing, as she was doing it, but soon found herself right before the boy. She wore a soft smile, one meant to comfort instead of coerce. Her father's approach wasn't paying off in the least, leaving her to try her own.

"Sweetie, don't get so close to-" her father's voice pleaded yet again, only instilling the notion that this young man couldn't keep a grip on himself, which she hated.

"Dad, please." she murmured, her words weighted and tone even. But even the dark haired boy before her seemed to recoil as she lingered nearer, as though she'd strike him herself. It hurt to know that someone could be fearful of her, especially someone who'd already gone through enough trauma in one night to last them a lifetime.

Reaching towards his arm gently, he cocked it back, holding his arms behind his back and tugging down on his sleeves defensively. Clare swallowed the lump in her throat and decided a new tactic.

"Let's walk in together, okay? I won't leave your side the whole time. I'll make sure I stay with you." It wasn't a promise she could guarantee even if she wished she could, but she felt desperate to even get one of his feet in the door, in the hopes that the other would follow soon after. "Please? I'd never hurt you, ever." Her voice faltered a bit on the last word, cracking as she fought to keep her composure. She still couldn't figure out why this boy had such a strong hold over her emotions, but she was beyond wondering.

After a few moments that could have lasted an eternity in Clare's eyes, he stepped forward, releasing his arms from behind his back and let them hang down like rigid boards at his side.

Clare let out a breath of relief. "Okay, let's go inside." It was still a risk, not having a hold on him but she wanted to believe that he wouldn't go running off into the night, probably far from his home now.

Taking a tentative step forward, she looked back and waited for him to mirror her step.

"You promise you're not going anywhere?" he asked, the pompous, confident tone from his talk in the car now gone. His limbs were trembling and the blood was rushing away from his face, leaving him paler than the moon above them.

Once again, she reached for him, surprised as he slowly grasped her hand in his. With a tender smile, she nodded, clasping her tiny fingers around his hand. "I'm not going anywhere."

* * *

Her palm on his made him quake. The warmth wasn't something he was used to, so accustomed to lacking a hand to pair with his own. There very well could have been a phantom of Julia's fingers laced with his at all times, for all he knew. So often he felt the line between reality and his past blurring.

But this hand, it was different without a doubt. She didn't even flinch as he reached towards her, to his amazement. It hadn't been in his plans to draw back from her gesture to begin with, knowing immediately that she meant no harm. But he couldn't just _let_ her touch him. For all he knew, he could have been harming her in the smallest of embraces, even. Eli didn't trust himself. He hadn't for a long time, and with someone as pure seeming as Clare was, he wasn't about to take that chance.

Their acquaintanceship hadn't even turned an hour old, and already she was extending her kindness, that soft comfort she provided in her company alone to him. This wasn't supposed to be happening, none of it. The heart that was beating so firmly at the thought of entering the hospital and holding this girl's hand was supposed to be dead. It should have been sitting idly in his chest, taking up space and serving no real purpose. What a waste of an organ it was, at least when inside of his own body. It wasn't even something he wanted. Had he been hit by a car, they could have made good use of that pounding nuisance, assuming it was left in unmarred after being hit.

Eli was quickly realizing how easily he slipped into his own morbid reveries, sucked into romantic thoughts of his own death. Still, he pined for that sense of relief he'd been denied, but it wasn't too late. As soon as he got out of this hospital, once his father got there and clarified that he was perfectly fine and able to leave, he'd go back to planning. Already the gears in Eli's head were turning, the spark and creative interest in this last feat reignited. While his attempt might have been thwarted once, he would ensure that the second time went without a hitch. Somewhere, there was a warm, velvet lined coffin just waiting for him to rest in. Oh, it would be the best rest of his life, no mattress could best a coffin in the way of eternal sleep.

Somehow, thinking about how he'd meet his maker didn't sit right when he was still holding Clare's hand, her thumb now brushing gently against his skin. For the time being, he'd humor them. It wouldn't be long before before his father managed to get him discharged. Until then, it was only a matter of keeping his grip. Hospitals made him shaky. The sanitized scent, the unnaturally vivid and unforgiving florescent lights overhead, it was enough to send him into a panic attack. His last time setting foot in one had been for Julia.

If only he'd left with her. Instead, he'd held in his hands her phone, her messenger bag, and a History book that she'd had on her. Mementos to remember the day by.

That day still felt too clear in his memory, even the scent of the wrecked and mangled metal creeping up into his nostrils when he reflected on the car wreck.

"Ready?" Clare reiterated, squeezing his hand gently in hers. The girl had no fear, no reservation. For all she knew, her dad could have been right about him. He could have been a psychopath. (At times, even Eli doubted the consistency of his own sanity) Anything at all could have been the case with him but regardless of this fact, she kept a tight grip on his hand. With a weak nod, he followed a pace or so behind her, essentially letting her drag him inside. Her father remained in tow, eying Eli cautiously as the trio entered.

From the moment they walked inside, he felt his chest tensing all over again, that same fear knocking on his door and barging in for an extended stay. It seemed Clare could sense this, moving her other arm and coiling it around his forearm. Rushing relief flooded through him, even though he still couldn't wrap his head around the way she managed to soothe him.

"Can I sign someone in? This kid right here tried to kill himself. Jumped in front of my car." Eli grimaced at her father's blunt phrasing, not sparing a detail or even bothering to embellish the truth as he spoke. The least he could have done was blow it out of proportion. If he was going to drag him to the hospital, he should have made a commotion about it – make the story worth listening to.

_Lock this one up! He's a monster, definitely needs a straightjacket and a dozen sedatives._

While his farcical daydream over it was a bit much, Eli still couldn't entertain the idea that he belonged here. If they just let him go, his life would no longer be a concern of this father/daughter pair, and none of the hospital staff would be privy to it either.

"You should have just let me die." he whispered under his breath, casting his gaze to the floor. But Clare had heard, her grip on him only tightening. It could have been to make sure he wouldn't slip away, but a part of Eli wanted to believe that there was more to it than that.

"You have just as much of a right to live as anyone." Her thumb smoothed over his arm, lifting goosebumps over the surface. In that moment, he let a realization hit him. Anyone else could have said that same sentence to him, and he would have cackled and ignored it, sweeping the commentary under the proverbial carpet.

But from this girl, he wanted to believe it. The statement didn't have even a hint of truth to it, but he wished more than anything that it did.

Soon a nurse came over, giving Eli the once over to check for any bruises or scrapes. "How did he try to kill himself again?" the middle aged, brunette nurse asked. Her name tag read "Nancy".

"I thought it'd be fun to play in traffic," Eli replied apathetically, though the question hadn't been directed at him. "and if you don't mind, I'd like to go home now." Eli was never one for polite pleasantries, especially when he was forced somewhere against his will. The only person he felt he could show the smallest bit of kindness to was the girl clutching to his arm, and even then, he didn't have a clue as to why.

Nancy, the nurse, narrowed her eyes at him, looking over the three of them. "Are any of you related to him?" she inquired, pulling out a clipboard with papers on it, holding it up at them. The only person who could fill out any of that information would be himself, or his father. Both of which weren't currently present. At least, Eli felt as though he was barely front and center for the event.

"No, we just-" the father began to speak, until Clare's voice broke in. "We're not his immediate family, but we're his father's family." she squeaked, her cheeks turning a slight tint of pink at the lie. Eli cocked an incredulous brow at her, then averting his gaze as he felt her squeezing his arm even tighter. "I'm his cousin. My dad is his uncle. We heard he was out wandering after a bad night and...well, we couldn't just let him wander, right?" she paused, as if waiting for a reaction to spur her on in the lie. "Just, he didn't even realize it was us and then once we realized..."

Now it was her father's turn to butt in. For the briefest of moments, Eli assumed he would out her lie, letting the nurse know that they had no relation to him whatsoever. It still struck him as odd that Clare would even make up something of that sort in the first place. "Once we saw him and the stunt he was trying to pull, we hauled him into the car. So here we are now. His father doesn't realize he was out on the road, trying to commit suicide. We just immediately brought him here, so he needs to be notified." Eli could tell it pained him to spit out the lie, going along with his daughter's fictitiously spun story.

But as the nurse cast a pitiful stare on Eli, he could tell she'd bought it. "We'll need a way to reach him then, and we need to get you checked in." she stated, nodding to him.

At that, the urgency returned, the obnoxious and overwhelming urge to vomit everything he'd eaten over the course of the day consuming him. His hand flew over his mouth, stumbling back a bit as he leaned on Clare for balance. "I- I don't want to be admitted. I don't...no. I can go home. Call my dad and tell him to get me."

Had anyone but the girl been holding him, he would have been struggling to get away but even as his body urged him to fend her off, he couldn't. She was someone he could never strike out at, for any reason at all.

"You attempted to take your own life. We can't even consider letting you go home unless we're sure you won't try to harm yourself." the nurse replied mechanically, filling out the top of a form as she spoke. Eli's hands only shook more violently as it dawned on him. There wasn't an easy way out of this, He'd have to collect himself and exude inner calm, even if he couldn't even recall what such a sensation felt like.

Backing up even further, Eli extracted his arm and hand from Clare's, moving himself towards a nearby chair in the waiting area. Hunching forward, his elbows rested on his jittery knees while he held his head in his hands. Everything was unraveling, even more so than they had been when he found himself in the middle of oncoming traffic. Waves of nausea hit him in an unrelenting fashion, bile threatening to creep up his throat despite several attempts to keep it down. His eyes closed as he pulled at his locks, strands of hair caught between his knuckles until he felt someone kneeling down before him.

Clare's benign smile met his gaze as his forced his lids open, her lulling demeanor still working to calm him down. "This is normal protocol, you know. They can't let you out unless you're sure you won't try to..." she paused, Eli widening his eyes as he waited for her to elaborate, "you know." The girl couldn't even mutter the word suicide. She was so pristine and graceful in her delivery of everything, she didn't even have it in her to utter the act Eli tried so desperately to entangle himself in. The word was too ugly to slip from such a pure tongue. Clare embodied everything good and wholesome in the world, he was convinced of it.

Eli nodded, understanding that certain measures needed to be taken. But his rational mind wasn't operating normally. He still wanted out. "I can't stay here. I can't. I...I need to get home. To my room. My things, my bed. I n-need to go." he stammered out, his legs still rattling beneath his arms.

Feeling her hands reach for his again, he let go of his head and hesitantly let her thread her fingers with his. Her movements were so subtly intimate, as though they'd know each other for a long while. Hell, anyone looking at them now might think they were best friends, or lovers. Eli couldn't even imagine how her father was stewing, seeing his daughter so close to him, their faces inches apart.

"You'll go home. You just need to tell them you won't try it again." she reassured him, holding their coupled hands together in the middle of them now.

"Yeah, but that'd be a lie." he sputtered, only realizing what he'd implied after the words had already leapt from his tongue. The effect was immediate on Clare, her face falling considerably, her bottom lip taking on that same quiver it had in the car when he entered.

At once she let go of his hands and instead wound her arms around him, embracing him so fluidly, like they'd been hugging for years as opposed to this first – and probably final – instance. As though her arms knew exactly how to hold his rattled and distressed frame, and they did. The comfort she supplied with him was almost overwhelming, there was just _so much_ of it that he didn't know what to do with himself.

"_No_." she stated firmly, her grip around his shoulders tightening. "You're not going to try and hurt yourself again, okay? You're better than that." She pulled back, revealing her teary eyes. Eli noticed how she tried to blink them back, instead letting one tumble down her cheek.

"Why do you even care?" Eli rasped in reply, stuck on the fact that she was so emotionally attuned to him, when he was the least deserving of the gentle treatment. As far as he was concerned, he was damaged goods. At one point, he might have been salvageable. But now, he was nothing more than a lost cause.

Before she could reply, the nurse spoke up, looking to Eli. "We need a number to reach your father with."

Blinking in confusion for a moment, he tried to recall Bullfrog's cellphone number, coming up empty as he pondered it. Instead, he reached haphazardly for his wallet "It's in there...somewhere. Check for a business card for a radio station. It should say Bullfrog Goldsworthy on it." he muttered, earning a confused nod from Clare before she handed it over to the nurse.

Yet again, the trembling resumed, this time tenfold. Clare returned a hand to his arm, cautiously stroking it through his sleeve. "If you think you're going to try it again when you leave, then you need to stay here."

Shaking his head and letting out a bitter chuckle, Eli looked to her. "Just forget I said that, alright? It doesn't matter what happens after I leave. It shouldn't matter to you." He could hear the nurse and Clare's father talking as they searched his wallet, presumably finding the business card he'd been referring to as they dialed a number on the phone.

His heart was beating erratically now, no rhyme or reason to its rhythm. It seemed Clare took notice of this as she leaned in closer to him once more. "Try to calm down. Let me distract you." she attempted, her tongue poking out to wet her lips as she thought. Eli could only stare at her blankly, slowly becoming more absorbed by the beginnings of a definite panic attack.

"What do you like to do?" she asked gently, rubbing her hand up and down his arm.

"Write. I- I...I like to write. I do that a lot."

At this, her expression lit up, sitting up a bit more straight on her knees. "I like writing too. Mostly essays, admittedly." Eli couldn't help but take notice of her sheepish demeanor at her words. It was endearing as all hell. Even as his mind felt like it was unwinding, unraveling right before his eyes, he couldn't help but notice that about her.

"Do you like to read? What kind of books-" she started, cut off by the nurse speaking again. "Elijah?" she asked carefully, reading his name from his ID. "We reached your father. He said he'll be here in less than fifteen minutes."

Eli wore an expression of sincere shock at the fact that they'd reached him, even more so that he was speeding over so quickly.

_Maybe I should threaten to off myself more often to get his goddamn attention. _

He wasn't left long to stew over the fact before Clare looked to him again, her eyes bright. "Your name is Elijah?" she asked, in a sweet, nearly loving manner that made his heart stop in the middle of its vicious rampage.

Locking his eyes on her, he swallowed hard, still fighting to keep his composure."E-Eli." he corrected, preferring the shortened version of his name.

She nodded, her curls bouncing around her face as her smile widened. "It's nice to meet you, Eli. I love that name." Whether or not she was saying it for his benefit, Eli didn't care. He couldn't get over the fact that this girl- this girl who resembled an angel more than anything at the present moment- liked something about him. There was so little to admire, so little to adore about his personality. For all intents and purposes, he'd already written himself off as a bitter human being. But she liked his name, the most simple and elementary facet to him. It was more than enough to pull his lips into a small smile. The first he'd managed all evening.

"We're going to get your vitals and everything started, hon." the nurse called from behind Clare, his muscles contracting again as he remembered where he was. Shaking his head, Eli buried his head in his hands, until Clare pulled them away.

"It's going to be okay. Your dad will be here soon, and you can talk everything over with the doctors."

"No, no. You don't get it." he stressed, though he came up empty when he attempted to describe exactly what she didn't comprehend. His father wouldn't come in as his saving grace. He wouldn't be the hero. For all he knew, Bullfrog would probably be ecstatic at the thought of getting his son off his hands. The entire house to himself for God knows how long. Hell, Eli figured he might just sign him over to the mental ward, if offered the opportunity.

"It's going to be alright." she repeated, though the phrase held no more truth than the first time she said it.

Attempting to control his shaking, Eli drew in a long breath through his mouth, letting it out through his nose. Mostly to appease her, he felt his own head nodding. "And you'll stay with me, right? You won't leave?" He hated the desperation coloring his tone, the sincere necessity he felt for this girl to remain by his side as long as she possibly could. He didn't even know her, he kept reminding himself. The attachment was born of nothing at all and yet, he couldn't bring himself to untangle his hands from hers as she reached for him again.

"I said I wasn't going anywhere, didn't I?" she assured with a smile, reaching to his face and brushing back his messy bangs from his eyes. "I'm right by your side, Eli." His eyes closed briefly at her touch, his full faith put into her words.

With her help, Eli rose to his feet, still wobbly but finding that Clare was more than willing to help keep him grounded. From there, he was led into an examination room, where he would later realize he'd spent more than five hours in, attempting fruitlessly to talk his way out.


	3. Empty Out Your Stomach

**I have a shit ton of stuff to say before you get to reading this chapter, so bear with me. **

**First off, man, I'm really pleased with how this is turning out and I'm so happy for the reception I've been getting. **

**Second, I changed my icon to another picture. So if it doesn't look familiar? That would be why. I got bored of my old one. But I'm still the same person, my stories are still all up, yada yada. **

**Alright. _SilverHeartt_ is an absolutely amazing individual for leaving me not one, but two detailed reviews. Good god, I was grinning like a fool at those, ha. I'm so flattered that you identified with certain parts in the first chapter. It's funny to think that you're not the only one feelings these things, once you throw them into your writing. It's wonderful to identify with a piece, and I'm so flattered that you did. And yes! I was implying that the owner of those eyes was Clare's father, haha. I'm happy that you picked up on that tidbit. And thank you so much for the compliment on my vocabulary. I can't even tell you how giddy comments on my vocabulary make me feel, it's a bit more than ridiculous. About your second review and your curiosity as to how Clare attempting to stay by Eli's side will pan out...well this chapter will answer that quickly. And I'll definitely keep my eye out for anything you upload, and I'll certainly review. **

**Also, _whisper2ascream333_ is pretty much the reason I even bothered extending this story past one chapter. She's been nothing but encouraging when I send her dribs and drabs of the chapters as I write them. She's a fucking brilliant writer and you need to go check her stories out right now. You won't regret it. No one writes Eclare like she does, it's absolutely amazing.**

**Just as a quick note, I'm thinking I'll be updating Blood Is Thicker soon, as I have a quarter of the chapter already done, but I'll play it by ear. No promises.**

**I don't own Lydia, I never will. But you should listen to the song this chapter is titled after. I pick the songs intentionally, as I hope they add to the story. In some cases, they actually form the chapters all on their own. **

**I'm rambling. Go read. Tell me what you think.**

**P.S. And I swear to fucking god I'll shut up after this, a certain beanie obsessed fellow might make his first appearance in this chapter, just sayin'.**

* * *

_You empty out your stomach,  
__so everyone can see that you are as black as the basement,  
__and just as wicked as me._

_But my God, what a mess I've made,  
My God, what a mess I made. _

_You changed back into your clothes, while I was thinking.  
My body is sick, yeah, it never stops breathing._

The sound of the radio playing couldn't drown out any of her thoughts. It couldn't lead her mind to a safety where none of the night's events took place.

She couldn't bring herself to say anything, instead poising her chin in her hand, her eyes drifting towards the window. There was an emptiness, after it all was said and done. The seat behind her was vacant, no memory of the boy they'd left at the hospital on it now.

Had she been anyone else, she might have wanted to write off the whole memory and cast it aside, just to salvage whatever shred of sanity she'd held onto throughout the ordeal. But his shaking hands, his vulnerable voice...

Eli Goldsworthy was one boy Clare wouldn't soon forget.

"You did the right thing, you know." her father comforted, his voice somewhat small against the radio, which he shortly after turned down. "They needed to know that about him, and he wouldn't have said so himself. You can't feel guilty for it."

Shifting uncomfortably in her seat, she could almost feel herself attempting to hop out of her skin. Anything to avoid this conversation she knew was coming. No amount of reassurance or encouragement on the matter would ease her mind. It wouldn't take back the look of betrayal on Eli's face, or the way he so brusquely removed his hands from hers, and didn't offer them back again.

"He would have gone and taken his life when he got home, Clarebear. You and I both know that." The very thought sent a profound chill through her body, eliciting another round of tears. That was just the thing. She _did_ know. She knew, standing before him in the hospital, watching as his father – a man far more burly than she ever expected him to be – signed his discharge forms, that his smile wasn't in relief for simply going home. It ran deeper than that. He had no intentions of living much past twenty four hours from then. The delight at the thought was written all over his face, even if he'd been spewing nothing but optimistic "I'll get better" and "I just wasn't thinking clearly" phrases for hours to the doctors. Eventually, with enough coercion, they believed him. But Clare didn't. She couldn't. Not after he'd spoken his mind on the matter privately to her, with such stern conviction.

Her eyes closed as she pictured him in a pool of his own blood, a bullet embedded in his brain or a knife slid down the center of his arm.

Shivering, her lids shot open, multiple tears falling as well. "He hates me now though. Did you see the look on his face? It took one sentence for him to hate me..." Clare was sure that his reaction was one thing she'd never be able to dislodge from her imagination. The way his jaw clenched and eyes shot open in her direction, wide with rage.

Slowing down a little bit, her father turned on the brights as drove onward, heading for home. "But you saved his life. Do you understand that? One day, he'll thank you. He owes an awful lot to you right now."

"He'll never want to speak to me again! I'm public enemy number one right now, Dad. He doesn't want to be alive, and there I go, forcing him to remain that way."

Sighing lowly to himself, Randall drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "Maybe that's better off; not speaking to him again. It was a fluke that we found him at all, sweetheart. I'm grateful we did, don't get me wrong. But had that not happened, you never would have met him. You two would still be strangers."

The word didn't sit well with Clare, strangers. It implied that a connection hadn't been forged through a shared experience. And it certainly had. At least, before she opened her big mouth about his real intentions.

"But, we're not now. I won't be able to stop thinking about him now that it all happened. He was just..." She couldn't bring herself to finish her sentence, feeling naïve for even thinking it to herself.

_So broken. _

"I think..." her father started, turning off the brights for a moment, though Clare couldn't figure out why right off the bat. Not until she realized they were on the same road they'd found Eli on. She couldn't blame him. She didn't want to relive the memory of him bursting out into the middle of the street either.

Illuminating the road only made the memory more vivid. "that the smartest choice would be to move on from this. You're not bound to him in any way, Clare. It was one incident. A fortunate one, for him. But an incident at that. When we go home, you should do your best to forget about this. You're strangers again, nothing more."

While she knew her father hadn't meant to sound so cold in his advice, Clare already knew she didn't have it in her to heed it. However brief the encounter had been, she could still feel his hands clutching onto hers while they were in the hospital. She could feel his strands of hair against her fingertips as she moved his bangs from his face, revealing those eyes she so quickly grew attached to.

"What if I can't?" she choked out, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "What if I can't just- shut off the memory like that? I still feel like he's here, Dad. I feel like he could jump out in front of the car at any moment, like I'm still holding him together in there." Her voice trembled violently, a hand lifted to her mouth as she tried to keep herself together.

Her head turned to her father, watching as he shook his head. "You're like your mother, you know. Sensitive to a damn fault." She thought for a moment that he was chiding her hypersensitive ways, until a small smile worked its way onto his face. "But you know who that ends up hurting?"

The question was rhetorical, she knew very well. But still, she mouthed a small "_me_" before settling her eyes back on the road, relieved when they turned down her street, an audible sigh leaving her as her father parked the car just outside their home.

* * *

"_He's lying."_

The words still resonated in Eli's ears, his pulse thumping wildly now that he was alone. Without anyone to comfort him. Without Clare's gentle embrace to keep him steady.

"We'll be moving you to the psychiatric unit soon, Elijah." the nurse, Nancy spoke softly to him, offering him a pat on the shoulder, to which he jerkily flinched away. He didn't want anyone touching him anymore.

"_He's telling you he won't hurt himself, but he told me he still wanted to."_

Forcing his eyes shut, Eli cringed, hearing Clare's words bouncing around in his head. He knew he shouldn't have blurted out his true intentions to her. But it was something he almost couldn't help, the truth rolled off his tongue without his consent. For whatever godforsaken reason, he trusted the girl in a heartbeat. She didn't even need to earn the position in his eyes. Her shaken and concerned stare from the car was more than enough to tell him all he needed to know.

But then she went and betrayed him.

"Kiddo, I can't say I know how long you'll be here," Bullfrog drawled out, wiping the fatigue away from under his eyes before huffing out a long breath. "I wish you hadn't gone and done that. You know you could have talked to me."

"No, I actually couldn't." Eli spat out without hesitation, his fists balling up in his lap.

He didn't look up at his father but he could see him adjusting his stance from his peripheral vision, as though he was taken aback by the audacity of his words.

Eli finally glanced up, noting Bullfrog's crossed arms about his torso. "What am I supposed to do, Eli? What didn't I do right?" If there had been one shred of sincerity in his question, Eli might have answered it. But the way in which it dropped from his tongue, he knew it was more of a defensive statement than a genuine inquiry. The man couldn't handle the fact that he was failing as a parent.

On the whole, a parent was one thing Bullfrog Goldsworthy hadn't ever wanted to be. After unprotected sex, it seemed the only viable option between him and his then girlfriend, Cece, but had he truly wanted to be a father?

Eli knew the answer as well as anyone. His dad held fast to the notion that his son had been an accident every single day.

In ending his own life, or attempting to, Eli was merely righting the wrong that had been done seventeen years before. Relieving him of the burden that was thrust upon him, but he never truly wanted.

"You were supposed to give a shit." His voice faltered slightly, his arms winding protectively around his own frame, in lieu of Clare's. He missed her gentle vanilla fragrance now. He missed the warmth of her smile, and her blind optimism that threatened to make even him a believer. "You never asked how I was. You're at the radio station late nearly every single night, and I know you don't truly need to be. Y-you could have come home. You just didn't want to."

Taking a moment to breathe, Eli wrung his hands together, cracking his knuckles in an obnoxious, loud manner. "It's like you can't even look at me without thinking of her." he murmured, his voice barely conveying the conviction he felt in his statement. Keeping his gaze fixed on his father, he swallowed the dry lump taking permanent residence in his throat.

Though his father had never hit him, not even once, the look forming in his eyes made him wonder for a moment. The red, fury filled complexion rising in his cheeks, the way the anger was becoming apparent in his stare, Eli had no idea what to expect.

As if sensing the tension, Nancy returned, carefully stepping between father and son – both literally and figuratively. "Elijah, we're going to bring you to the psychiatric department now, okay? It's five floors up." she said with a nod, offering her hand to help him rise to his feet. Though he didn't feel steady in the least, he ignored her offer, still dead set against contact with anyone.

"Does he need clothes? Or something? Am I supposed to bring something for him?" Bullfrog asked gruffly, yet again excelling in his role as paternal guardian. Eli glowered at him, still in dumbfounded awe of just how neglectful he could truly be. He knew other kid's parents weren't like this. They had family dinners, talked on rides to school, they effectively communicated. But he couldn't even remember the last time he'd gotten more than five minutes of his father's attention to himself, at least in an undivided manner. It was always placed elsewhere. Either on work, or self-loathing, or some mixture of the two.

The apple didn't fall far from the tree, needless to say.

"Um," Nancy thought, still a bit unsteady as to how to react to the abrupt man before her. "For tonight, we'll probably give him a gown and pajama bottoms, so he should be fine. But, for the rest of his stay..." A wry expression adorned his Eli's face at the thought of being at the hospital for an extended stay, but that was the look of things at the present time. "It would be nice if you brought him some comfortable clothes from home. No belts. No ties or anything. No sneakers. We can't risk it with laces." she bantered on to herself.

"Oh, the _laces_," Eli found himself mocking her, grinning to himself. "We wouldn't want me hanging myself on my shoelaces, would we, Bullfrog?" The words he was speaking barely made sense to even him. His mood felt mercurial, apt to shift for no true reason at all. The only thing he could internally blame it on was his apathy. From here on out, he didn't truly care. They could cage him in a hospital, bereft of anything to end his own life with for as long as they wanted. He'd bullshit and feign improvement if need be, just to be released eventually. But the moment he left, he would stop putting off the inevitable. Everyone died. He was electing to take the option of influencing how it happened. He wouldn't die on anyone's watch, only his own. It wasn't something he felt he needed to ask permission to do either.

Both his father's and Nancy's eyes widened at his uncalled for statement. He shut his mouth immediately after, feeling unstable in his own skin and with his own thoughts. He wished he could shed his own existence, and crawl out an unmarred, capable person.

But it was far too late. So very, very late for him.

_If you discharge him, h-he's going to go home and kill himself. He told me he wanted to. Don't let him go._

As Nancy led him down the hall to the elevator, he shot his father one more glance. One filled with animosity. One that said, "smile, you've won."

* * *

Clare didn't stand a chance in hell at falling asleep. Beneath her two blankets and even with the softest pillow she owned beneath her head of haphazard curls, the Sandman was obstinate in denying her the peaceful bliss of slumber. With each flutter of her eyelids, the raven haired boy would appear. He'd be trembling, muttering senselessly to himself, clutching onto her frame for support.

Even with miles separating them, she could feel him more potently now than ever.

She couldn't wrap her mind around how someone could feel such a plaguing, persistent depression. Like a dark cloud looming over their head, hovering closer, winding around their neck and suffocating them mercilessly. Eli embodied that hopelessness like a poster child, at least in her eyes.

Clare wanted to see beyond that. She wanted to know what the boy liked to do in his spare time, when he wasn't frequenting busy streets in the hopes of getting hit. There must have been more to him than that, she reasoned.

He must have been a person with sincere interests, like his writing. That was the one tidbit she'd gotten out of him in their time together, apart from his name. He was a writer.

It didn't surprise her in the least, knowing the most tortured of individuals were the artists. The ones clinging to sanity at the edge of a paint brush, or seeking out redemption in the sound of a pen scratching against paper. While she had never felt that desperation herself, she knew the cathartic sensation that could accompany writing. In every paper she wrote, every short story she scribbled down, she found a tiny escape from reality.

It wasn't that her own life was horrible. In fact, she almost had an inability to recognize the downfalls of her own existence since she was so unyielding in observing how those around her were hurting. It was as if her own problems didn't exist in the face of others. It was the driving force behind her ever kind, always selfless personality. Such a thing was innate to Clare, she didn't even notice it within herself. But the trait shined through to everyone who was lucky enough to have her in their life.

Twisting onto her side, she blew out a long breath through her lips, her hand clutching the pillow a bit closer to her face. While she didn't want to assume, that was exactly what she found herself doing about this enigmatic boy at four in the morning. She should have been asleep already, blanketed in a layer of blissful ignorance for at least six hours, until she had to wake up for school. But now, she couldn't see herself garnering any rest at all, not when these thoughts weighed so heavily on her.

Her father's advice to push the day's events far away had fallen on deaf ears. How could she possibly expunge Eli from her thoughts, now that he'd so thoroughly taken up residence in her mind?

Perhaps it was naïve – in fact, a large part of her knew it was but couldn't do much to dissuade herself of the fact – but she felt connected to him now. As though she'd placed a portion of her own emotions inside his chest for safe keeping, to tide him over through the rest of his trials and tribulations. That had been her intention before everything fell by the wayside.

The panic, the sheer horror she'd experienced when his father was given the papers to release him could still be felt, lingering just under her skin and influencing her stomach to knot up. She couldn't watch him leave that building, knowing it would definitely be the last night of his life. It was prying, she could admit it. Her words definitely fit under the category of 'sticking one's nose where it does not belong', but she couldn't bring herself to regret it. Even her father, a man who believed in privacy above all else, encouraged her honesty in the situation.

She'd much rather know Eli would be lying in a hospital bed rather than a casket. She needed that peace of mind more than she could articulate to anyone, especially him.

It didn't matter how briefly they'd known one another: once a person entered Clare's life, she felt as though they never truly left. She got attached easily and unknowingly invested herself in people. Nine times out of ten, they couldn't help but get invested in her right back. She was that kind of person.

Eli's outlook on his own life might have been bleak, but she couldn't bring herself to view it in the same light. Everyone had potential, and to her, his was just begging to be recognized. He was a passionate individual, at least she thought so judging by their short lived friendship. If one could even call it that.

While he might have viewed his own desperation and plea for help as pathetic, she found the humanity and honesty he possessed beautiful. People weren't made like Eli Goldsworthy anymore. In fact, she was shocked to see even one of him existed. He was a rarity, and because of that, she found herself hard-pressed to do away with all thoughts of him.

More likely than not, he was angry with her. Clare chuckled sadly in spite of herself, wrapping a curl tightly around her finger. Angry was putting it mildly. Surely if looks could kill, she would have dropped dead the instant she opened her mouth. She couldn't scrutinize Eli and his rash reactions after such a trying night, though it did lead her to wonder if he was always so intense.

Her eyes began to droop a bit as she considered how it felt to cling onto his arm so closely, or the way his heart pounded so thunderously in the examination room of the hospital that her own fell into the same rhythm. Clare pondered how his bangs hung just over his eyes, cheating her out of a full view of those gorgeous emerald eyes he had. There was something about the boy that set every one of her nerve endings on fire. Each of the steps she had taken out of the hospital had been reluctant. Clare found herself wishing desperately that she could have stayed by his side, like she falsely promised she would.

How anyone could find such a creature grotesque, how they could see him as anything less than enchanting, she would never know.

* * *

Groaning out audibly, Eli tugged his long sleeve t shirt off his slender torso, tossing it down onto the bathroom floor. After reaching the psychiatric department, he was promptly awarded an ugly hospital gown and matching ugly pants for the night, or however long it took for Bullfrog to get his ass back there and bring him some real clothes.

As if the whole ordeal hadn't been emasculating and humiliating enough, now he had to don a gown the consistency of dryer sheets. Worse yet, it was short sleeved. The material only covered a bit of his arm, barely hitting his elbow while his arms hung at his sides. There was nowhere to hide inside of it.

The scars were apparent against his alabaster skin – angry red lines littering the surface, some of them inflamed since they'd only been created hours before. What the doctors and nurses couldn't see before would now be exposed, try as he might to shield them. That was the trap about all of this; he wasn't ready to talk about his own coping methods. For a time, they'd been working perfectly fine. But just like anything, they wore out their welcome before he could find a suitable replacement, other than offing himself.

His skin was ugly and fractured, just like everything that lied beneath it. Eli wasn't one for vanity, but he knew that anyone who eyed his arms, his abdomen, his thighs, would wince and turn away in discomfort. He'd made quite a canvas out of his own flesh. Even where he hadn't marked himself up lately, there were scars that had taken over after years, not quite fully healing since he frequently sliced right over them.

In the lackluster light of the bathroom, he looked even more sickly as he took in his own reflection. His hair felt matted against his scalp after how much he'd tugged on the strands, only stopping when Clare had pulled his hands away.

Oh, Clare. How would she react to seeing him so exposed now? Would she have been so inclined and comfortable taming the beast he was? Or would she have shrunken away, alarmed by his marks and battle scars?

The internal musing didn't even deserve an answer, he knew. The chances of ever seeing the girl again were slim to none, despite her promise to stick right by his side through it all. That was one thing he couldn't hold against her. He was livid over how she so quickly ratted out on his intentions, but she did do her best to stay by his side for as long as she could. And, even though he wasn't entirely sure, he couldn't fight off the feeling that she would have remained by his side, all but attached at the hip, if she'd been given the choice.

Eli didn't want her to see him like this. While he was deplorable to begin with, being stripped down to hospital wardrobe only showcased his flaws more effectively. His spirit, not that much of it was left anyway, had been depleted and deflated over the course of the past six hours.

Gathering up his clothes, he opened the bathroom door and stepped out, turning to Nancy who had been standing just outside the door. For a moment, he forgot the cut marks all over his arms and, in turn, that lapse of memory had offered up enough time for her to notice them. At once she reached for his arms but he tugged them back, his head bowed shamefully.

"You didn't tell us you self-harm," she breathed out in shock, the pity in her voice palpable.

"You never asked." he replied curtly, to the point and devoid of emotion.

A moment of silence passed between them in which Eli kept his eyes dutifully cast on the floor, hers on the many scratches, slits, and stabs in his skin. For all intents and purposes, his arms were a carving board, jabbed too many times in the process of relieving tension. Eli had been cutting for so long that he was essentially detached to how horribly he'd besmirched and defiled his body. It didn't matter much in his eyes, but he knew everyone there would make a point to preach to him about it.

Finally Nancy cleared her throat, seemingly collecting herself and taking the articles of clothing from him. "You need to wear those clothes for now," she said, gesturing to his outfit, "at least until your father brings in hospital-approved clothing. We can't take a risk on your well-being, Elijah, it's just-"

"I'm not going to hang myself on my belt, okay? Can you stop harping on that?" He didn't mean to snap at her, but his patience was wearing impossibly thin. "My blood won't be on your hands, or anyone's here." he assured, protectively rubbing his arm until he skimmed over a particularly inflamed cut, hissing at the contact.

With a silent nod, Nancy stepped back. "You'll be meeting with your assigned therapist sometime tomorrow afternoon. For tonight, we're going to give you a sleeping pill to help you pass out, and I'll bring you to your room."

Knowing he didn't have a say in the matter, Eli simply nodded, following her dutifully to the nurse's station. Soon after, she offered him a cup of water and a pill, which he quickly downed, aching for anything that would offer him a dreamless sleep.

"This," she stated, handing him a folder, "is a packet of forms about our system here, how things will go over the course of your stay. Now, I don't expect you to skim these over tonight since you'll be sleeping soon, but tomorrow, it would be wise to read through them, and learn a bit about the process we implement here."

Already feeling the pill's effects since he hadn't eaten in hours, Eli blinked a few times and then grabbed the folder, tucking it under his arm. "How long will I be here?"

She shrugged, tilting her head slightly. "Minimum...two weeks. Maximum? A month and a half. We'll have to play it by ear, Elijah."

Nodding quietly, Eli swayed a bit on his feet, until she let out a sigh.

"And, lastly, I'll show you to your room. We do have a roommate system here, but if you ever have a problem with who you're assigned to, please don't hesitate to let someone know. We aim to have as few conflicts here as possible." As she began walking down a hall, Eli followed, stopping as she moved to a a door that was left ajar.

She peeked her head in before entering, letting Eli slip in after her. "Adam? You're going to have a roommate." she said gently, obviously fond of the person who was already staying in the room.

"Oh yeah? About damn time, I was getting lonely," another voice spoke in a joking manner, Eli looking around Nancy at the owner.

"Adam, this is Eli Goldsworthy. He just got here, so please help him around and answer his questions if he has any. Eli," she paused, looking to him, "This is Adam Torres."

Adam outstretched his hand eagerly, reaching for Eli's. He could see tiny marks scattered along his otherwise clear arm, though he tried to fix his eyes on Adam's as he shook his hand in return. It seemed he couldn't return the same courtesy, his eyes searchingly moving over Eli's arm, drinking in the scars. Quickly, Eli pulled his arm back, placing it firmly at his side again.

"Well, Eli, your bed is right over there," Nancy pointed to bed to the right of him, "and you do have a small closet for your items, should your dad come by to bring you some things." With a quick nod, Eli shuffled over to his bed, the hospital socks he'd been given making an irritating sound as they moved against the floor.

Nancy moved back towards the door, shooting Adam a warm smile and then looking to Eli again. "Get some rest. We'll get started on everything tomorrow. For now, just try to sleep as much as you can." With that, she left, leaving Eli to fall back onto the flimsy mattress. It was nothing like his bed at home, nowhere near as comfortable but he was so exhausted, he barely cared.

Adam sat up in his bed, peeking over curiously at Eli. "I'm glad you're a guy." he said softly, obvious enthusiasm laced in his tone.

Lifting his head up from his pillow, Eli cocked a brow at him. "Excuse me? Pray tell, why wouldn't I be a guy?" he questioned, bewildered and almost insulted by his commentary.

Quickly, the boy shifted down further under his covers, his skin turning a pale shade of pink. "It's just...I don't even know why I said that," he muttered, attempting feebly to laugh it off. "The girls here are annoying, that's all. That's uh, that's it." he explained.

Eli hardly bought his excuse but felt too overwhelmed by apathy and exhaustion to interrogate him further. Lowering his head back down, he felt his eyes growing heavier by the second.

"I'm just really glad I'm not alone in here anymore." Adam muttered quietly, shutting off the shared lamp in the room before he settled back down on his bed.

Grumbling out some halfassed, hardly intelligible reply, Eli nodded and turned on his side, his back facing Adam. It only took a millisecond before he fell headfirst into an anesthetized slumber, one that offered the numb oblivion he'd been seeking all day long.


	4. Hailey

_She loved those nights when  
We'd breathe up that black air  
Yeah, come on tell me how, tell me how  
I'm not underground_

* * *

His eyelids lifted slowly, as if lead had been piled atop them in his unconscious state. For a moment, he jolted up with a start, alarmed at his unfamiliar surroundings. Where were the posters scattered along the walls of his room? And the mess that seemed to have a depth he'd never be able to estimate along his floor? It was all gone as his eyes adjusted, glancing around in a frenzied manner. Instead, he was met with the sun streaming in from a window not far from his head, one he'd failed to notice the night before, and four clean, white walls.

"Howdy." a voice spoke to his left, making him jump yet again, this time nearly lifting clean off his bed. As he abruptly turned his head, he found Adam chuckling to himself. "Forgot where you were? Everyone is like that their first night here." he said simply, brushing his hair back with his fingertips before covering his head with a black beanie.

Eli grumbled out a few choice curse words, rolling his eyes in exasperation. He wasn't used to sharing a room, at least not anymore. For a while after Julia passed, he'd turn in his bed, waving his arm around in the empty air, hoping to catch her body in his embrace and pull her closer. It took at least three months of aimlessly reaching to realize there would never be a substance to grab a hold of, no warm body to keep his company on his queen size bed.

She hadn't been there long enough to leave an imprint on her side of the bed, but he still slept on the right side, his own designated spot. It was as if he welcomed her ghost to rest beside him. If only such a thing existed.

Stretching out his arms lazily, he yawned, letting out an obnoxious groan. "What time is it?" he asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"Ten forty five. They let you sleep longer than usual, since they pretty much knocked you out with that sleeping pill. You don't usually take medication, do you?" he asked curiously, earning a cocked brow from a secretive and still extremely sleepy Eli.

"I wouldn't say it's routine for me, no." _But I imagine it will be soon_.

As if reaffirming what he was already thinking, Adam nodded. "Well, you'll be a walking zombie for a bit then. You'll get used to it after a while."

"Oh joy." Being forced into a numbed-out state wasn't terribly unwelcome in Eli's eyes. At least it would bring about that quiet ignorance he'd been striving for, though he couldn't fully welcome anything that wasn't the end of his rope. Again, this was merely a waiting game, he reminded himself. Each of the days in this hospital could be crossed off his proverbial calendar, each square bringing him closer to true peace and quiet. The perpetual, other-worldly kind that he couldn't achieve while living and breathing.

Beginning to move around a bit, he pushed his unruly mop of hair back from his eyes, then realizing he had absolutely no idea what to do with himself. This was new territory; a place he never pictured himself ending up in. Just the day before, he was locked in the quiet solitude of his room. Sure, he was lonely and the only thing holding his attention completely happened to be a razor, but at least he was home.

"...Can I ask you something?" Adam questioned, his face depicting the uncertainty he obviously felt with the inquiry.

"Depends. I might not answer, but you can give it a shot." he shrugged, almost completely convinced that he wouldn't answer whatever the boy blurted out.

"Why are you here? I mean," he stopped, then gesturing to his arms, "I bet it has something to do with _that_, but, did you come here on your own?"

Glancing down at his own scars, which somehow looked slightly different since he was finally wearing something that allowed air to openly hit them, Eli pondered it. "I wouldn't say I came here by my own devices, no." His answer was vague, but fulfilled the requirement of answering it.

"_Ookay_, I'm seeing I'll have to be more direct." the boy replied with a laugh, one that almost made Eli's own lips curl up in amusement. "_What_ got you here? If you don't mind telling me, I mean."

Still not meeting Adam's gaze, Eli pressed his lips into a thin line before speaking. "A middle aged man who looked like he needed some Rogaine and a vacation, and a beautiful girl." His voice grew soft at the mention of Clare, his anger at her dissipating just a bit. It was hard to hold a grudge against someone that tenderhearted, someone so charitable and selfless. The only thing pulling him through his own dreary thoughts was the memory of her hands holding his.

Adam's jaw fell open a bit, not fully comprehending his explanation but accepting it without further quizzing. "Ah, gotcha."

"No, you don't. But that's fine. I'm not in the mood to explain." Eli laughed, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Well, if you're ever in the mood to discuss it, I'm fond of stories. Especially ones that lead you to the looney bin." He threw his hands up in mock excitement, a half-grin, half-grimace painting his lips. "Are you ready for everything today? To meet your therapist and crap?"

Finally peering up at him, Eli shrugged once more. "Probably not. But I don't think anyone is ever really ready for this sort of thing." he relented, standing up from his bed. "I'd much rather be doing something though. I don't have my notebook, my laptop, nothing. I'm already getting antsy to be busy." Cracking his knuckles loudly, he looked to their door and then back to Adam. "How long have you been here?"

For the first time, Adam seemed to shrink back a bit, his shoulders curling in towards his body. "Close to a month. I think I'm ready to go home, but I know my mom is iffy about it." Subconsciously, he gripped his left arm with his right hand, his fingertips trailing over the marks Eli now realized were burns.

"I can understand that." Eli nodded, though he knew he probably couldn't comprehend a struggle belonging to anyone else, but he still wanted to make an attempt at kindness. For all his annoying banter and overly enthused greetings, he figured the boy meant no harm. Being stuck in a mental institution for nearly a month would make anyone itch for company. For all he knew, he could be much the same in that amount of time.

"So uh, ready for breakfast er- lunch? You missed breakfast, sorry. They told me not to wake you up."

With a hearty chuckle, Eli stepped forward, finally letting down his guard a bit. "I'm famished. Let's."

* * *

"What _what!?_ How did this happen? And why weren't you in school to tell me about this?" a female voice shrilled through Clare's cell phone, making her pull it away from her ear.

"It's a really long story, Alli. I get tuckered out just thinking about it. I was just too tired after it all happened to go to school, so I didn't."

"Well you can't tell me you were at the hospital all night and not say why. Spill, Edwards. You better have contracted cancer or something to have missed school today, it was a good day for once." she grumbled, waiting impatiently on Clare's explanation.

About fifteen stuttered phrases and four amendments made to how she explained the situation later, she finally managed to give her best friend some clarity on the situation, leaving her speechless on the other end.

"So now this boy is at the mental hospital? Full on crazy-suicide-watch-straight-jacket bonkers?" she inquired nosily, her ignorance on everything and anything concerning mental health shining through expertly.

Sighing loudly, Clare lifted herself from her computer chair, beginning to pace slowly around the length of her bedroom. "You watch too many movies, seriously." she muttered jokingly, though she truly couldn't believe the skewed image her friend had created for herself when it came to hospitals. "He just...they couldn't let him go. Not after how he told me he'd do it otherwise. I did the right thing, right?" she questioned, nibbling on her nails, one of her many nervous habits rearing its head.

"Well, yeah. I mean, you saved his life when you really think about it." Alli agreed, staying silent for a moment before speaking again. "That was kind of brave of you, Clarebear. Sticking by him, I mean. He could have knifed you or something, you never know. If he was that unstable."

"I repeat, you watch too many movies." Clare rolled her eyes, stepping around her hardwood floor in her socks, putting one foot directly in front of the other as if she was walking on a tight rope. "He never would have hurt me, Alli. I just know it. He was too sweet, too warmhearted for that."

Alli scoffed skeptically, earning a frown from Clare though she couldn't see it. "You didn't know him all that long, I don't think you can really know that for sure."

"No, I'm extremely sure. I held him, I held him while he was shaking and he didn't show even the slightest traces of anger or instability when I did. It was like he felt safe with me or something," she breathed, wistful and stuck in her own memories of the raven haired boy. She missed him, it was something she could openly admit, despite how senseless and irrational it might have seemed to her parents and her best friend. "He was like a fallen angel, I swear it."

"Okay, now _you're_ the one who sounds like they need a visit to the ol' looney bin, Clare. You can't fall head over heels for a suicidal manic at first sight. Come on, be real with me."

While Alli might have meant well, everything she was saying was only working to diminish Clare's last nerve. "And what if I did? What if I did fall in love with a...suicidal manic at first sight?" she choked out, only using the same title Alli had to quote her verbatim. Clare's idealistic, Nicholas Sparks-induced views on love and life were still very much intact, not yet tainted by reality or any disappointments in her own life. Because of this, the idea of love at first sight was a plausible one to her. What else could be the cause for how the boy made her heart race and her cheeks flush? She felt an intense bond had been created.

"Again, looney bin." Alli giggled, not taking her seriously in the least. Quickly Clare realized speaking about this would be a lost cause. "But, I'll humor you a little longer, this is entertaining. Did you at least catch his name?"

"Elijah." Clare spat out, the name resting on the tip of her tongue. All day she'd been mouthing it to herself, along with its nickname variation, enjoying how easily it left her, and how warm the name made her feel. "Well, he told me to call him Eli. Eli Goldsworthy."

Alli abruptly drew in a breath, one she could hear through the phone. "Um, do you somehow know him?" she asked quizzically, puzzled as to how her friend would have any knowledge of this boy. The mere thought made her oddly jealous.

"He goes to our school, actually. I'm surprised you haven't noticed him." Hearing this, Clare wondered the same, though she generally kept to herself during school hours. Making new friends wasn't on her agenda any day of the week. "He's in grade eleven. Sav knows him, they've hung out a few times." she replied with unease in her tone, seemingly afflicted with a case of zipped lip at the question. But Clare wouldn't settle for that. She had to know all there was to know about this mystery boy now, despite the fact that Alli was rarely a reliable source. Anything was better than wondering.

"And...?" she urged her to continue, her stride around the room picking up in pace.

"And...he doesn't have all his marbles, Clarebear. It doesn't surprise me that he ended up in the looney b-"

"_Can you stop calling it that?_" she snapped, finally at her wit's end with Alli's ignorance.

There was small pause on the other end, before Alli spoke again. "He listens to this death metal crap, and talks about death a lot. He like, writes about it and stuff." she muttered with a clear distaste in her words.

"I know he's a writer, he told me." she said back, mostly unfazed by this new knowledge. "What else?"

"He just...gives me the creeps. The eyeliner and the black nail polish. Clare, he drives a _hearse_ for crying out loud!"

At this, the curly haired girl's jaw dropped slightly, but not in shock. More so, intrigue.

It was as though Alli could hear the gears in her best friend's head moving through the phone. "Oh no, Clare. _No_. Do not get a crush on this boy. He screams trouble! You found him while he was plotting his own death, can you not see the flashing, seizure inducing red lights telling you to stop?" she ranted, but she was already too far gone, lost in her own thoughts. A hearse. Morbid, yes. But unique. He wasn't like every other bland, jock boy who attended Degrassi. And sure, he wrote about death, but what poet didn't? Even her favorite, Plath, romanticized the idea of ending her own life until she actually did. It wasn't too out of character at all for a writer.

Drawing in a long breath, Clare blew it out through her parted lips."I can't believe I've never noticed him at school."

Alli groaned loudly, "I've already lost you. Good god Clare, you really do look for trouble sometimes."

* * *

Eli was quickly realizing a few things about his stay – facts that would remain true throughout the entirety of it, he'd later find.

One: hospital food wasn't necessarily as bad as everyone claimed, but the milk could not be trusted to be fresh. He found that out the hard way with his lunch the day of his first stay.

Two: hospital gowns served one purpose and one purpose alone – to unravel their strings relentlessly, giving all his new neighbors and companions a wonderful view of his back, which, luckily had no scars on it. He was the only one in the ward who was still wearing a hospital gown and baggy hospital pants, everyone else already having graduated to their own clothes from home. Because apparently, everyone else had parents or friends who gave a damn.

Eli was green with envy over this fact.

After eating his mostly unsatisfactory (though he hadn't expected a grand feast) lunch, he decided to stick close to Adam. The boy didn't seem to mind, keeping up lighthearted conversation ranging from video games to comic books, a thing Eli quickly realized they had in common.

The next four hours slipped by without much ado, much to his relief. After lunch, Eli retreated back to his room, away from the general commotion of the rest of the floor. Despite numerous mentions that he should attempt to mingle, as it would make his case to get out sooner look better, he couldn't bring himself to.

Some people there were blatantly mentally distressed, mumbling a bit to themselves or swiping in the air at specters that didn't exist. Those ones didn't unnerve him too much, despite their obvious unhinged state. At least their eyes looked alive – there was something in that bottomless pit of a soul to save.

The ones that disturbed him were the ones who owned a pair of vacant eyes, the ones who stared out into the nothingness around them blankly, not truly registering the goings on around them, barely even going through the motions of life. They acted more like useless furniture instead of active members of society. The worst part was, they didn't seem to mind nor did they realize this was truly the extent of their lives. That they were missing anything at all. Even the pain, which they might have willingly traded over for their numbed, coma-like state.

Eli never wanted to live his life with such an emptiness in his heart. The burden he carried was already heavy enough. While he felt like offing himself on a regular basis, at least he could feel feel his heart throbbing in his chest, however dull the sensation might have been.

All of his experiences had scarred him over thoroughly, but he was proud to wear those marks on his sleeve, he was eager to die with them showing vividly on the outside. But these people, they didn't have enough in them to still want to die. They had nothing- essentially- they were nothing.

He feared that vacancy the way most people would fear death. He knew it was backwards thinking but couldn't seem to reroute it, too stuck in his own mindset to switch gears.

Avoiding everyone seemed to be the best tactic for the day. There would be at least thirteen more days to subject himself to it all, if not more. Thirteen were guaranteed, at least.

He was told shortly after waking that his first appointment with his therapist would be at three thirty. Now that the hands on the clock were threatening to hit three twenty six, he knew his time to avoid it all was dwindling.

Eli had seen therapists before, three to be exact. It seemed things went from bad to worse with each one, only seeing each for about a month. His past experiences left him pessimistic for how this attempt would turn out.

The difference now was, he didn't have the choice to up and leave. No matter what, he was stuck in the hospital. If he tried to leave, they'd only drag him back and make every effort to keep him there longer. His natural instinct to fight things off had to be diminished, ignored for the time being.

"You're blending in with the walls, bro. Are you alright?" Adam spoke as he entered the room. Eli cocked a crooked brow at him, struck by how forced the word 'bro' sounded coming from him. The jargon didn't come naturally by any stretch of the imagination.

"Yeah, I'm fine." he forced out, rising to his feet from his bed. "Just, I've been to therapists before. It never ended well."

Earning a nod in reply from Adam, he rubbed his hands over his own face, attempting to force the blood back into his appearance.

"Dude, the sooner you get it over with, the sooner it'll be over and you can join us crazies again." His voice was filled with mock excitement, and this time, Eli couldn't help but crack a smile. The kid was working through his walls faster than he ever anticipated a person could.

With the exception of Clare.

After rubbing his eyes raw, Eli glanced to the clock, noting the time. Three twenty nine. The door to the therapist was right down the hall. There was no valid excuse to show up late.

"Alright, I'm going. Wish me luck. Hopefully I'll come back alive." Eli chuckled, patting Adam on the back.

"You've already got one foot in the grave. Just keep the other one out." he advised, a serious expression present on his face, before it cracked into a soft, concerned smile.

With a nod, Eli left the small safety of their room and walked out into the hall, stopping just before the door to the therapist's office. With a trembling hand, he let himself inside, instantly met with a quaint looking room. And a surprisingly kind face.

"You're Elijah?" the woman sitting at the desk before him asked, standing and extending her hand to shake his.

"It's uh, Eli. I've been dying to ask people to just stick to Eli around here." There was a tremor in his voice, one he tried with little success to mask.

The woman seemed to pick up on this, her face and tone softening as a result. "Eli it is. I'm Tina Ross, but please call me Tina."

Shaking her hand as steadily as he could manage, he then took the seat before her desk.

Already he could feel his teeth sticking to the inside of his mouth, any and all words he had before now lodged painfully in his throat. His fingers tingled with a latent anxiety, perspiration tickling his palms.

This was the beginning of an attack, he knew it.

But his legs felt shackled down to the floor by the weight of his own stupidity. For choosing to try and get himself killed by an oncoming car. For not choosing a more pedestrian method of suicide. Strangling himself, flinging himself from a bridge, anything else would have proven to be more successful, earning him the outcome he so desperately desired. Theatrics didn't work well in the way of trying to die. It didn't pay to die a magnificent death that someone might turn into a book or movie down the line. Those were made up of pure accidents, not actual intent.

A small part of him wondered, poised on the curb of that busy street, if he'd truly go to Hell for his twisted method of dying, like any Catholic person would insist.

Instead, he was beginning to believe that hell was right here in this hospital, coming to him in the form of this unassuming, kind looking middle aged therapist, who was about to try and worm her way into his skull.

His guard was up higher than it had ever been, spurring an uncomfortable pulsing in his temple.

"Do you want to start with what brought you here?"

_No_ would have been the instantaneous answer, the one that tried to leap from his tongue. But he swallowed it back with the rest of the lodged words in his throat, suffocating himself a bit more on every sentiment he wouldn't express.

"I just...I don't know." he mumbled, his voice weaker than weak, barely carrying enough for her to fully make him out.

Tina's head tilted, a quiet patience in her demeanor. Eli knew she was trying; she really was. Even in the mere minute or so he'd been in her office thus far, she was already putting in more effort than any of his old therapists ever had.

"Your record, which I read before you came in...it says you attempted to take your own life last night."

His knees began trembling, his feet practically hopping up and down on the carpeted floor.

"I..." Eli stuttered, feeling inane in his failed attempt to articulate.

Leaning forward, Tina rested her elbows on the desk, mustering up her sweetest, most patient face.

He didn't deserve her serenity, the quiet she provided him with to voice his own thoughts.

How could he possibly backtrack it all and tell her how it started?

How he left his house, his arms bleeding through his shirt and just took off?

How his heartbeat just _wouldn't slow down._ How he feared it might break loose from its confines if he didn't do the damn thing in on his own?

How it all started with her jet black hair and her sharp tongue, her distinct taste in classic rock and inability to keep her rebellion-laden mouth shut.

How she existed in his dreams still, if nowhere else.

There was no way, he decided.

And as soon as the realization hit him like ten million tons of bricks, he knew he had to excuse himself. Ducking out from the office, he ran to the only bathroom he knew of just yet, his body making sudden and forceful contact with the porcelain throne inside.

The poor excuse for lunch mingled with the toilet water nauseatingly, making him heave even harder until nothing, not his fears or his reservations, not the words lodged in his throat or the secrets in his head came out.

Relief only reached his now emptied stomach, his forehead covered in a sheen of sweat. He flushed the toilet repeatedly, his mouth hung agape from the exertion.

"Oh...man," he heard Adam say from behind him, taking tentative steps towards him. "Dude, remember what I said about keeping that foot out of the grave?"

Eli didn't even respond, his eyes fixed idly on the toilet before him.

"You're dipping your toe in, seriously. You gotta pick yourself up and try. You have to let them help you, Eli."

His eyes began stinging, a mixture of the stress from just vomiting and having a panic attack creep up on him and being stuck in a hospital – all of it weighing on him.

Finally as his head bowed and he let it out, the salty evidence of his grief, Adam looked away and gave him that moment to break down, but he didn't leave his side like everyone else had. And for once, Eli was glad.

* * *

Busy chattering filled the Edwards' family dinner table at approximately seven o'clock, dinner time well underway.

While her parents discussed their respective jobs and the things that had happened during the day, Clare shamelessly zoned out, silently poking around at her food on the table. After getting home so late at night, she found out later that her father had clued her mother in as to what happened.

In fact, she could even hear her mom raise her voice through the wall, a shrilly, _"Why would you let our little girl in with a boy like that?! You should have driven her home! Oh Randall..." _piercing through the divider between them, despite her attempts to tune it out.

It was all very melodramatic to Clare. While she knew without a doubt that it was her mom's way of showing concern, all too often it was overdone. A simple _'my goodness, I'm grateful everything turned out alright' _would have sufficed. But Helen Edwards always went above and beyond the call of duty.

The topic was forgotten it seemed, all except for Clare. Eli still resided in her thoughts, more so than anything else had. She wondered what he was up to now, if he'd seen a therapist or talked to anyone yet. It wasn't her business, but that didn't stop her from wondering.

She could only listen to her mom go on about people not minding their own business during church so long before she had to speak her mind.

"Um," she squeaked, both her parents looking in her direction. "You know...that boy last night?"

At the mention, Randall groaned, rubbing his head. Helen narrowed her eyes at Clare, almost offended at the thought of him. As if thinking about the boy would ruin the sanctity of the dinner table.

"The one who flew the cuckoo's nest? What about him, Clarebear?" her mother asked impatiently, but her comment had been too much for her to handle.

"H-he has a mental illness, Mom. Clearly he couldn't handle things at home and looked for an out. That hardly earns him such a cruel nickname." She was tired of everyone making a mockery of his stunt. It was reactions and judgments like that that probably drove him to the act. It was a plea for help, and no one else – adults at that – could recognize it.

Helen huffed out a breath as she sipped from her glass of water. "If I had been there, you never would have met him. I would have brought him to the hospital, certainly. He needed the help it seems. But once I dropped him off, he would have been the _hospital's problem_." she enunciated, glaring daggers at her husband for his choice to do otherwise, to linger far longer than necessary.

"It's a good thing we stayed. They would have released him if we hadn't stuck around. We'd be reading his obituary in the paper." Clare's voice was cold, hardened. It took everything in her not to burst into tears at the thought, at the reality of it but she wouldn't let her guard down in front of her mother. For some reason that seemed entirely unreasonable now, she had thought she might be more sympathetic about it all.

Instead, she viewed Eli as an even bigger liability than her father had the night before. It didn't make any sense. Charitable, kind Helen Edwards, turning the other cheek at someone who needed support. It sickened Clare.

"And that would have been a shame, but not our fault." Helen spoke curtly, attempting to veer off the topic by going back to thoughts on the Sunday Mass.

In the pit of her stomach, Clare could feel her appetite being replaced with a churning anger.

"I'm going to go see him sometime in the near future." she announced boldly, daring her mother to argue with her.

And she did.

"You will do no such thing!" Helen retorted, her cool facade lost finally. "They wouldn't even allow you inside! You have no relation to him. Clare, don't let your naivety and bleeding heart lead you astray. That boy needs help the likes of which you cannot offer. Thinking otherwise is ridiculous. Don't even bother."

Biting down on her lip, Clare pushed herself back from the table, all thoughts of eating far gone. "He was better with me. I could keep him safe. He felt safe with me." she asserted, offended by the fact that her mother was using her kind nature against her; the very thing she'd worked so hard to instill and nurture over the years. Now it was suddenly a useless trait that would lead her down the wrong path? It was something Clare couldn't accept.

All the while, Randall ate his food uncomfortably, his shoulders hunched over his plate. He would be no help, though she hadn't expected much support from his end.

"Goodness only knows what he was thinking about doing to you all the while." Helen rasped, her tone venomous, meaning to offend Clare.

"...You weren't even there! How would you know?"

"Your father said the boy was reluctant to let go of you. I don't care if he was ready to die right that moment or not, boys that age think about one thing and one thing alone-"

Standing up from her chair, Clare refused to listen to any more of her banter. "_You_ weren't there. _You_ didn't meet him. You didn't see him shaking. He was _scared_, mother. Terrified. Anyone with a heart would have stayed by his side like I did."

Not waiting for a reply which would no doubt only serve to make her angrier, she stormed up the stairs, slamming her bedroom door behind her.

Going to see him the very next day wouldn't be an option, seeing as though her parents would be expecting that. That would have been a _naïve_ move, like her mother was so insistent on titling her.

But a week in between, that could be managed. Though it would be a full week of wondering and worrying about him, Clare hoped he'd still be there by the time she showed up. It filled her with personal satisfaction to know that her mother had in fact been wrong; to the hospital's knowledge, she was Eli's cousin. Right there was an avenue to see him, so long as he played along.

She hoped he missed her just as much as she missed him. She hoped he pondered her before sleeping just like she had the night before, and would every single night for the rest of her life, probably.

_Just one week_, she reasoned, deciding to go on the half day she'd have the following Wednesday. In the meanwhile, she decided to compile a list of books she might want to lend to him. While she had no personal experience with staying in a mental hospital, she could only imagine it was as drab as drab could be.

Shamelessly she plucked Romeo and Juliet from her bookcase first, smiling as she placed it aside, fully set on having him read her favorite play when she saw him.

_Just one week._

* * *

**Didn't expect an author's note, did you? Ha. Next chapter is when the fun starts. I like reviews, so feel free to leave me those.**


	5. Birds

**First off, hi. Thanks if you're still reading this. I had difficulty with this chapter, I'm not sure why. But once I got past it, I really enjoyed writing it. It's all from Clare's perspective this time around. Next chapter will be all Eli's. **

**Also, I'm working on the next chapter of BIT, but it's going to be a long one. A lot needs to happen in it, so if it takes a while to get put up, that would be why. **

**That's it. **

**Enjoy. Review if you feel like it, I like those.**

* * *

_Now it's your eyes  
__They're moving  
__Cutting through me for some damn reason_

_Always a mess  
You want to change how I'm thinking  
Change me around  
I'm all yours, I'm all yours _

The waiting was driving her mad. The tapping of her flat against the pavement as she waited for the bus gnawed at her, the anxiety residing in the pit of her stomach doubling in intensity. In her backpack rested three books, titles that she'd sought out comfort and solace in over the years. Ones she hoped Eli would be interested in reading as well.

_Romeo and Juliet_ by William Shakespeare

_The House at Pooh Corner_ by A.A. Milne (It didn't matter what age Clare was. She knew at eighty, she would still poke her nose through the classic.)

And _The Great Gatsby_ by F. Scott Fitzgerald

(Picking just those three had been a task and a half in and of itself. The curly haired girl all but tore apart her bookcase, attempting to pick the perfect books for him.)

It was hard to tell what he'd prefer, seeing as though she barely knew the boy. Outside of witnessing his unraveling at the hospital a little over a week prior, she knew nothing of him. Only what she could infer from their vague and short lived conversation.

While she knew that the first would come across as uncreative and overly romantic, it was a timeless play that she couldn't get enough of. In some ways, Eli even reminded her of Romeo. Mouthy, sharp tongued, but so much passion buried beneath all of that on the surface.

Her choice in children's literature would surely earn her a snarky quip or two but A.A. Milne's book never failed to fill her with a comfort no other book could. Perhaps it was her inner Pooh enthusiast speaking, and Eli probably didn't share in that, but she knew it was worth a shot.

Her last choice was purely based off of her immediate feelings towards it. She'd finished reading it the night she met Eli, and for that reason, her mind seemed to jump to it without much conscious thought. Regardless of that, she found it to be a stellar book that embodied that same gusto she noticed in the boy.

Each novel was dogeared and damaged in spots, a testament to how she'd gone through them herself. But she wanted him to enjoy them if he could, if he had the attention span required to. To her knowledge, there couldn't be much to do while being hospitalized, even if he was attending therapy and such.

The longer Clare waited for the bus to show up, the more she began to wonder if she was truly making the right decision in going. There was no guarantee that Eli would even want to see her, especially in the aftermath of her parting words.

That expression of horror written all over his face as she spoke was forever burned into the back of her eyelids. Was there a way to come back from that? Would she still see that same boy who needed to hold on to her for stability? Or the one with a calloused, betrayal laced tone that told her to leave. That she'd done enough damage for one night.

Her time to weigh the endless options and outcomes was cut short.

When the bus came ambling down the street, she hopped on, looking around in slight paranoia as she paid her fare.

It was a small town. It wouldn't have been too outside the realm of possibility for someone her mother knew to see her, and report back that she'd been going to the hospital. After their rousing debate over dinner and the few spats that took place after that, she wasn't about to risk ruining this chance to see Eli.

The bus made a few unhealthy sounding noises before it took off, and Clare bid adieu to her last chance at backing out.

Seating herself towards the front, to ensure she didn't miss her stop, she fought between crossing her legs or sitting Indian style. Eventually she decided that crossing them would be more appropriate in her skirt and tights. The little facts were getting to her.

Like the way the man a few seats away reeked so obnoxiously of cigarette smoke. It was as if he was made up of those same chemicals and nicotine himself.

Or the bus driver who didn't know how to operate the brake pedal correctly at all, slamming down on it abruptly in a way that made Clare feel queasy. She tugged her jacket a bit more snug around herself, pinning her brows together uneasily. The ride wouldn't be long at all. In fact, in the time she'd spent fidgeting and feeling self conscious, about half of it was gone. There wasn't enough time in the world to spend preparing herself for this outing.

Good intentions aside, there was no promise that Eli, in all his brooding, troubled and creatively-inclined splendor would even acknowledge her. If she managed to get inside by saying she was his cousin – which was a risk on its own – the next task would be getting him to speak to her.

She wouldn't be able to rightfully blame him if he refused. And while she could feel the tears pricking at her eyes with the mere thought, she'd have to leave with her head held high.

Her eyes traveled to the scenery outdoors, the rushing buildings and activity flurrying all around them.

Everyone was allowed to go about their own lives without a care in the world as to what someone else thought of it. Why shouldn't she be entitled that same option?

As the bus arrived just a block away from her destination, she decided that she was in fact entitled to that same option, and she would take it.

Her footsteps were quick down the sidewalk, maneuvering gracefully through the throngs of pedestrians that littered the area. It wasn't that getting there any faster would change the outcome. She could waste the next hour in this part of town, show up, and still garner the same frigid response from Eli, if that was what was in the cards.

But she felt as though the quicker she went, the less time she had to reconsider the situation, the less apt she was to go back to the bus stop and wait for the next one to pass through. Fifteen minutes and a dollar later, she found herself not even a full block away from the hospital. Her logic was telling her to throw caution to the wind for once. She knew the worst way this could turn out, and at least as much as possible; she was ready for it.

Entering the hospital, that same memory of her holding Eli's hand as they ushered him in returned to her with stunning clarity. It was as though a phantom of his knobbly hand was still grasping onto hers, but he was the one pulling her inside this time.

She knew the psychiatric area was the fifth floor, so she didn't bother inquiring at the main desk about it. The sooner she got there and figured out if she'd even be allowed entry, the better it would be.

Her finger prodded at the elevator button, a brief sigh of relief leaving her as the doors popped open, no one else already inside of it. She stepped in, pushing the foreboding looking five button and then ascending in the small lift.

The next thing she knew, she was right before a main desk filled with nurses, each one's scowl more unpleasant than the last. Could working in the psychiatric ward truly be that horrible? She couldn't imagine Eli being placed somewhere so clerical looking, so devoid of emotion in a place that should have been oozing it.

This wasn't like the book she'd read – an odd vision of _It's Kind Of a Funny Story_ rushing through her imagination. As far as she could tell, this place was lacking in that animated sort of livelihood – not bursting with spirited characters who just needed someone to understand. Although Ned Vizzini had created a world in his book to dispel the notion most of his readers had about the environment, Clare found this one step into the real world of it was more sobering than any piece of literature could be.

"Um, excuse me?" she spoke quietly, hoping to gain one of the nurse's attention. Finally when one, perhaps the most friendly looking of the bunch, (though it wasn't by much at all) looked to her, she squared her shoulders and piped up. "I'm here to see Eli? Eli Goldsworthy? I'm his cousin." Her voice trailed a bit too quickly, and to anyone who might have been skeptical, she would have been outed in a second.

Either the woman was too absorbed in her own thoughts or didn't care, because no fight was put up over the actuality of shared blood between them. Clare breathed in a small sigh of relief, one hushed under the palm of her hand as she faked a yawn.

Clare followed silently as the woman led her around to a short hallway, checking the room numbers as they went along.

The nurse looked around a few times, stopping in front of a room. Peeking her head in, Clare felt the smallest bit of dread fill her. Was he not there? Had he been discharged? Or was he just refusing guests?

"Is he...?" the nurse asked quietly, to which someone inside replied, "No, he's awake. Just lying down."

Knowing he was right there, behind the partly closed door sent Clare's heart racing. A violent wave of nausea passed over her, engulfing her senses and making it so she felt lightheaded.

"His cousin is here to see him."

"My _what_?" a groggy sounding Eli muttered out, and that was when Clare was allowed inside. Before she saw Eli, her eyes rested on another boy, likely around their age, who wore a beanie and a soft smile.

"Here you were thinking you wouldn't get any visitors, Goldsworthy. Looks like you have some family hiding out there in the world." he teased, nudging Eli's shin with his foot.

As she rounded the corner, she spotted him, lying flat on his stomach, his face stuffed into a pillow.

"Eli?"

He only turned at the sound of her voice, lying on his back. "Clare? W-what are you doing here? How did you get here?"

"I... well," she faltered, the fight or flight sensation holding her once again. Keeping her arms firm at her side, Clare decided to bite her tongue.

"Okay, maybe a distant cousin," Adam mumbled to himself, attempting to keep some sort of humor afloat within himself to disengage the situation."I uh, I should probably give you two space, right? I mean, family quarrel and all. I'm no referee. I'll just...be in the arts and crafts room, Eli." Darting out, the two were left to their own devices, Clare still choking on her own tongue as she attempted to organize a coherent sentence.

Eli sat up a bit in his bed, and only then did she realize he was in hospital attire; the flimsy gown they offered patients. His father hadn't even come by to give him his own clothes yet.

Her eyes trailed down further, catching sight of his arms.

His mangled, scarred, reddened and abused arms.

"Clare, goddam it," Wrapping his arms around himself to hide away his marks, he grumbled out unintelligibly.

Without thinking, she sat herself beside him, reaching for his arms until he recoiled, jerking back on the bed away from her.

Her lip quivered, her mind racing. Every previous intention she had for this visit was torn asunder with one glance at his arms. "You d-don't deserve that." Her voice struggled to come out, barely carrying between them in the small space.

"You have no idea what I deserve." was his cold reply. Just as she had suspected, he hadn't let go of their last interaction at all. If anything, it seemed like time apart only created a grudge.

Through her blurred vision, she met his eyes, and found something very different living in them from the last time she'd seen him. Moreover, it was what was lacking in his gaze that struck her. There was a vacancy. The green hue was dull, barely catching the light from the window near his bed.

He must have been taking something. Put on some sort of strong medication. Clare was by no stretch of the imagination an expert on medication, least of all those along the mental illness vein. But the distance that stretched across his eyes, it made her feel as though he a continent or two away.

Eli's breaths turned shallow as the tension seemed to ebb away, as if he didn't have enough energy to keep up their discord. "I don't know why you're here." His hands fell away from his abdomen, giving up on the task of masking his cuts from Clare. She'd already seen them, the image successfully incinerated into her imagination. The only thing more disturbing than the sight of them was imagining how they came to be.

She cringed unabashedly as her mind tried to conjure it up, but she fought it.

Instead of offering an honest reply, Clare wiped her tear-stained cheeks, then reaching for her bag. "To give you some things." She grabbed the three books, handing them to him gingerly. "These are some of my favorites."

He took them wordlessly, barely casting an eye on them as he placed them on a nearby nightstand.

"They uh, they put me on meds."

Clare paused, shrugging off her somewhat offended feelings over his reaction, or lack thereof, to her books. "Is that why you're-"

"A walking zombie? Yeah, that'd be why." Clare frowned a bit, not liking how harshly he could refer to himself.

His hands lifted to his face, rubbing it raw. "I can't think. I try to get up and do something, and then I just lay back down because I can't focus. I'm tired. Clare, I've never been this tired in my life."

The sight of him was creating cracks in her chest, her heart aching for this boy that, despite his genuine attempts to heal, still looked just as broken as he had a week before.

Maybe the process of being healed required being broken until you couldn't be anymore, but that wasn't what she wanted for him. In that moment, if she could have taken his discomfort, his anguish, his sickness, she would have. Without a second thought, she would have lifted it from his shoulders and placed it on her own.

His skin was so pale, almost translucent in the lights above them. She wasn't sure what had gotten him to this point, but the drugs circulating through his system certainly weren't helping matters. At least not yet. For all her faith in modern medicine, she wondered how much it was aiding him as opposed to doing damage.

The pair sat quietly a few moments, before Eli let out a humorless laugh to break the tangible silence hanging between them. "Sometimes I think you're not real. Like I made you up. I'm crazy enough to, you know. You could just be in my imagination."

"Eli..." she started, but was cut off as he let out another guttural laugh, one stripped of comic relief or even sincere joy. It was the same strangled sound that left him when he attempted to shake her father off of him that night.

"There's just...something very lacking with me. I know it. I feel it."

She felt as though anything she could possibly say in reply would inevitably come up short. When he sucked in a sharp breath through his parted lips, she looked to him again.

"I've been this way for a year or so now. Honestly, time is a concept I really can't get a grip on lately." He shifted uncomfortably in his spot on the bed, pushing his shaggy bangs out of his face. "It's just, I was ready to quit. I was and then I wasn't allowed to. How can someone deny me that?" A bit of anger slipped into his inflection now, and Clare couldn't help but feel guilty. After all, she was essentially the harbinger of his entry into the hospital. Had her father not been the one to nearly run him over, she couldn't assume exactly where he'd be now.

Probably in a morgue. Or a casket. Neither options were ones that she liked considering.

"I don't want to be here anymore. I tried to go to a therapist my first day here, and you know what happened?"

Staying quiet, she shook her head, urging him to continue on.

Bitterly, he chuckled. "I had to run out. I couldn't spit out a damn word. Do you know how pathetic I felt? I never even intended to end up here, and when I do, I can't even handle talking to someone about anything. I ended up having an up-close-and-personal chat with the toilet bowl though. That was pretty grand. Vomiting into a toilet is always a high point." He reached for his left arm with his right hand, running his fingertips over his scars while he stared at the blank wall before him. "They want to know everything right off the bat and I'm not capable of letting it all out. I've had it in for so long, and I know that's where it all belongs. But they keep telling me, if I don't let it out..."

"-they'll keep you here longer." Clare finished his statement, and he nodded gravely.

"You don't know how badly I want out, Clare. I just want to go home. I don't even have it in me to kill myself anymore. I just want to rot away in my bed." Though she flinched at his phrasing, Clare didn't turn away, his words only strengthening her resolve to stay put.

"I'm not all there." he stated bluntly, shaking his head to himself. "I was at one point, but then it just went away and I can't get it back."

Clare looked from his sullen face, those heavy bags beneath his eyes and his washed out complexion, down to his arms, and she couldn't stand how helpless he seemed anymore.

Tentatively, as if he might strike out if she wasn't careful, Clare moved closer to him, carefully placing her hand on his arm. Her touch was nearly weightless, her fingertips dancing over his scar tissue covered skin. It didn't matter how damaged his exterior might have been. She found every single inch of the boy before her beautiful. His personality, his spirit, it all spoke for itself.

"I think enough of you is here." She smiled delicately, every move she made cautious so as not to break him.

She worried perhaps she'd crossed a very obvious line at first, feeling him turning towards her. Some sort of spark seemed to reignite in his eyes for the time being, and she'd be a bloody liar if she said it didn't fill her with gratitude. His ghostly, empty appearance had been unnerving to her. But now, there was a light in them that hadn't been before.

The expression he wore sent chills up and down her spine, lifting goosebumps all over her skin and rushing a crimson blush to the apples of her cheeks. Eli leaned in a bit, gently pressing his forehead to hers. "I sure as hell hope so." he replied, his tone soft, his breaths hitting her nose lightly. The faintest beginnings of a smile took home on his lips, and she couldn't help but hope that it was their proximity that brought about the curve in the corners of his mouth.

Far too quickly for her liking, he pulled away, sighing out loudly into the air. "Well, it hasn't all been hellish here. Want to hear the not so shitty things?"

Somehow the tension in the air seemed to disappear with Eli's shift in conversation. Clare welcomed it wholeheartedly, laughing and then nodding to him.

The next half hour was spent listening to the highly medicated though still quite descriptive boy go on about his discoveries in the hospital thus far. He let her know who the boy she'd first seen when she walked in was – Adam, and told her about his first few talks with him. While Eli seemed mildly irked at how excitable he could be, it was clear that he was equally as grateful to have a welcoming fellow comic book aficionado as his roommate. Beyond that, he told her of spoiled hospital milk and how some people forgot to wear pants, leading to a few awkward moments on the floor.

"Speaking of which..." he trailed off, gesturing to his hospital gown, "Does it look good on me? Don't hold back now. I know I pull this off better than anyone here."

His laugh was lazy but genuine and she returned it, shaking her head and smiling demurely at him. "You're bound to be a trendsetter with it, Mister Goldsworthy. Soon everyone will be swiping the style from you."

Eli rolled his eyes dramatically at her. "They can have it. I'm just waiting for my dad to show up one of these days with clothes. If he ever does." She had previously assumed that he was wearing the article out of necessity as opposed to choice. It still bothered her that his father was so neglectful, and she hadn't yet heard anything from him about his mother.

Even though her own curiosity was eating at her, something inside told her not to ask about it.

She found she couldn't get enough of him. Though his sarcasm and snappy replies were stunted for the time being, his humor was very much alive once she got him talking. These little moments let her know that no matter how far gone he personally believed he was, it was all false perception. She was seeing the true Eli. And if she could help it, she'd be there to remind that he was lurking just beneath all the pain and self-loathing. That was the Eli that she felt herself helplessly tripping, stumbling, falling madly and deeply for.

"Eli? Visiting hours are over. Your cousin needs to leave in five moments." A voice from behind them spoke. Clare and Eli both turned, a kind looking nurse smiling. "I'm really glad you had some family visit you today though. The support is important."

Clare suppressed the giggle threatening to bubble up from her lips at the mention of being Eli's cousin, the lie still working its magic.

"I'm glad too, really." Eli said contentedly, looking to Clare and then to the nurse. "I'll walk her to the door in a second."

She nodded, satisfied with his reply and then left. Once she was out of sight, Eli bumped Clare's shoulder playfully. "Cousin? You're still going with that?" he inquired in a hushed tone, amused at her fictitious relation.

"They weren't going to let me in otherwise!"

"So Miss Edwards is sneaky. Duly noted."

"I have my moments." she shrugged modestly, though she couldn't fend off the wide smile at their banter.

Lifting herself from the bed, she pulled the strap of her bag more firmly up onto her shoulder, feeling it weighing less than it had when she showed up with the books. "Please read the books I brought? Even Winnie the Pooh? Let me know what you think."

Choking back an impish laugh, Eli nodded. "I think it might kill my ego to read through it, but for you, I will." Rising to his own feet, he surveyed her for a moment before speaking. "Does this mean you'll come visit again?"

The delight was impossible to mask, Clare's eyes acting as a true gateway to her thoughts. The happiness was all but radiating off of her. "Absolutely. Whenever you want me to."

After deciding that perhaps Friday would be a good time, Clare ventured with him from the room to the door where she had entered earlier. Only two days without seeing him. She could do it, even though the thought of being torn away from him now was eating at her. She wondered if he was feeling the same, until he looked around quickly, then moving closer and peering down into her eyes.

"Sometimes I really think you're the only thing that's going to pull me through this," His eyes were still dim, his features gaunt and tired looking, but there was hope. "Is that bad?"

Clare looked around in the same manner he had before reaching for his hands, warming his chilled fingers in her small palms. "I'm not going to let you down, so no, that's not bad at all." She offered him her warmest smile before carefully, reluctantly, walking into the elevator. Facing him again, she pulled a deep breath in._ Friday_, she mouthed, holding the elevator open for a moment longer.

_Friday, _he mouthed back, the longing in his stare enough to tide her over until they spoke next. Slowly, she released her finger from the button, letting the lift descend back to the first floor.

The smirk he wore as the doors closed managed to stain her thoughts for the rest of her bus ride home, leaving her in a jubilantly elated state for the rest of the night.

As much as she was a remedy for him, she was beginning to believe he was just the same for her.


	6. Skin&Bones

**A few things before you get into reading. I don't want to rant and put this massive author's note so I'll try to be brief. **

**_ Bree525_ - Your commentary had me smiling like no tomorrow. I'd be humbled and ecstatic if this story really did have a hundred comments on it, but I'm extremely content with the feedback it has gotten. And I'm planning on making this story a lengthy one, so you might just get your twenty five chapters. Well, I'm exaggerating. Maybe something near twelve or fifteen. I'll play it by ear. **

**_ CampbellFan101_ - If you're still checking in on this story, then we both know what really did end up happening to Cam. And I'll be perfectly honest in saying it influenced the direction this story is going to go in to a degree. I won't say how, but maybe you'll notice over time. But, I did expect Cam to commit suicide after Bittersweet Symphony part one. Regardless, it didn't sink in until Simpson was telling Maya and Katie. My jaw still dropped and my heart just...sunk into the depths of the fucking ocean. The episode hit me really hard and left me feeling numb. **

**Last but certainly not least because I said so**

**_ drew_ - (who I sincerely hope will see this because I'm being so terribly honest) I was having an atrocious night when I saw this comment. I felt extremely depressed and while that didn't go away entirely, seeing your comment made me feel better. It was so encouraging and knowing that someone thinks my writing is that noteworthy, I was so flattered. I just...yeah. It truly lifted some of that off my shoulders and I started writing this chapter again right after I read it. I just had to make note of it here. So thank you. **

**I'm getting sappy and shit so okay. And that ended up being a lot of ranting, sorry. Anyway, just read it. Review if you want, quite obviously I appreciate the feedback. Enjoy.**

* * *

_Yeah I found out I've been  
__Out my my mind for some time  
__But come on, you knew that  
__You, you knew where my head has been at_

_Yeah cause I've been out of my mind for some time now  
__But everybody knew that  
__Hope someday I'll get my head back  
__Yeah, asking where the fuck it's been at_

Since waking that Thursday morning two hours before, Eli had had his head buried in _The House At Pooh Corner_, a bemused smile spread across his face all the while. For the life of him, he hadn't read a piece of literature so nonsensical since he was in grade school.

Eli sat at a table for breakfast, halfheartedly biting into an apple as he read. He was on the chapter in which Tigger makes his first bouncy entrance when Adam took the spot beside him. Tilting his head down a bit to get a look at the title, a loud, mocking laugh left him.

"Pooh? _Winnie the Pooh_? Weren't we just talking about Stephen King last night? Here I was thinking you had good taste in books." he chided, quickly digging into his cereal.

Eli dismissively waved his hand at his friend, waiting until he reached the end of the chapter to put down the book, the spine sticking up in the air. "I wouldn't say this is my usual choice in literature, but Clare left it for me the other day. She insisted I read it, so I'm trying to get through it first before starting the others." He tried to feign complete disinterest in the book, but the fact that Clare had given it to him made the ruse null and void from the start. "As if I could even focus on the others. My brain has this striking resemblance to alphabet soup lately..." said Eli thoughtfully to himself, the small book requiring more effort than usually necessary to comprehend.

Unsure as to who Eli was talking about, Adam narrowed his eyes. "Clare?"

"Yeah, Clare. You know, curly hair, showed up for me yesterday...?"

"Oh! Your cousin. You never introduced me to her. Rude."

At the mention of her being his cousin, he chuckled, then taking a hearty bite out of his apple. After chewing and swallowing, Eli shrugged. "I didn't really expect her to show up. You know, with me being here and all. She was the last person I expected, really." The lies slipped fluidly from his tongue. So far, at least.

"Do you two get along? It was kinda hard to tell. You looked like you wanted to bite her head off."

With a dramatic roll of his eyes, Eli nodded. "Yeah, we get along great. Better than I ever have with anyone else really." There was an unmistakable longing in his tone that although he had worked hard to get rid of, he couldn't eradicate it completely.

"Oh?" Adam urged, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Did you two like, grow up together or something?"

"...not exactly?" Eli attempted, cringing slightly. He bit into his apple again to keep his mouth busy, and for lack of anything better to do in the moment.

A beat passed in which Eli held his peace, knowing anything that he said could and would be misconstrued on Adam's behalf.

"Cousins. Sure. More like kissing cousins." Adam quipped.

Widening his eyes, Eli blinked a few times, his expression then growing serious.

"If you say one thing to the nurses here, I swear-"

"Nah, I'm not going to rat out on you and your little girlfriend. I mean, _cousin_." he coughed obnoxiously, grinning to Eli.

He groaned in reply, placing down the mostly consumed piece of fruit. "No, we're not dating. Not even close." he snorted, the notion laughable to him.

It took a few moments, but soon it seemed Adam was putting together the bits and pieces Eli had told him about how he got there. "You mean...she's that 'beautiful girl' with the dad who brought you here?"

"So you do retain details, good to know."

"Dense is my normal setting, but here and there I can be sort of perceptive."

Eli laughed vacantly, his thoughts mostly with Clare. "It's an impossible situation, seriously. What are the odds of meeting someone like her out of that kind of incident? Her dad dragged me in the car, I turn my head and then...there she is," Mulling it over had him fully capsized in her blue eyes again, the concern and compassion spoken wordlessly through them.

"Love at first suicide attempt...?" Adam questioned, half humorously, but Eli knew a part of him was being serious too.

"Try third." Eli deadpanned, drumming his fingers on the table.

"Oh." he mouthed in reply, the conversation successfully killed with his blunt honesty.

Eli had never questioned before why his prior attempts hadn't worked out, why he wasn't a corpse beneath the recently rain-soaked ground already. Most of the time, the reasons seemed to double as excuses. He was too nervous, too distracted, the timing was wrong. When it came down to it, he knew his cowardice was the deciding factor in what kept him alive, a fact he rued every day he woke up. No one could be blamed for his lack of courage other than himself. Had he not continuously spooked himself out of the task, perhaps the intended result would have been achieved the first time around.

But instead, on his third try, he came face to face with the only thing to ever make him grateful that he hadn't succeeded. It was a bizarre sensation – _gratitude_ flooding through his entire being at the sight of one very frightened, very worried girl. But now that he had been given time to objectively see it, there was no doubt in his mind. Clare Edwards (and somewhere along the way, her father) had saved him.

It wasn't a fact he was about to present to her, knowing how heavy a burden those three words could be. _You saved me_, speaking that phrase would put true emphasis on the key role Clare was playing in his life, how thoroughly she had seeped into his bones, his mind. How instrumental – pivotal, even – she was to his recovery.

It made him wonder why so many heavy sentiments could be encompassed in three words alone. It was as if the number begged for permanence, that it could uphold such a poignant sentiment, be it positive or negative.

Obviously Clare's intention never had been to save him, yet another factor that made him reluctant to admit it. He still had no idea exactly what her and her father were doing, driving along that road that night. For all he knew, he could have been the end of a perfectly calm evening, one she was sharing with her family. Before that moment of near impact, he meant nothing to her, and she nothing to him. Not enough to deem his life salvageable.

A very large part of him still felt as though he lacked a purpose, that he was an empty vessel more or less, but Clare flipped a switch inside him. What said switch was capable of changing, he still wasn't entirely sure. But she knew where it was, even if it happened unknowingly, whereas he was still stuck in a daze over the shift. In all the calamity he'd created for himself in stepping off that stabilizing curb, the only semblance of reason left in the aftermath was her.

Explaining that to his therapist would prove to be fruitless so he didn't bother, instead keeping the tidbit to himself. After all, Clare felt like the sweetest of secrets, one he even had trouble parting with to shed light on the matter to Adam. She was completely, and then again not at all, his.

If only she was his in truth. To call someone that tender, that resoundingly patient and kind his other half, he couldn't think of a better way to spend his shame of a life, if he would be forced to live it at all.

Though he could barely concentrate just yet on leaving the hospital, his therapist had made a mention of possibly releasing him within two weeks, should he make progress. As of yet, the only visible change in him was the cumbersome sluggishness. Sometimes Eli wondered if the method of the medication was to make him too exhausted to kill himself. That was the only solution it was garnering thus far.

He was considering retiring to his room to read when a nurse approached him, a duffel bag in hand.

"Eli, right? I'm sorry, sometimes I get names mixed up." the hesitant nurse asked, as though he might bite off her hand if she got too close. She had to be new.

"That's what they generally refer to me as, yes." he replied coolly, satisfied in giving her a hard time.

Her eyes went from him to the bag, then back to him. "Your father brought these by just before, they're your clothes." She offered him a small smile, but it couldn't disengage the anger that he felt at the knowledge that his father had been there, but didn't stop to speak to him.

"H-He was just here? Just now?"

"Yes, he came to the desk on the first floor and asked that we get this to you."

Limply, his hand stretched out to grab the bag, then placing it down next to him.

The nurse quickly excused herself, and Eli was left to gape at the undeniable carelessness his father could exude. He really had handed him over to the hospital, content to make him a ward of the state if it meant getting him off his back.

Eli tried to remind himself that he expected this. That he knew Bullfrog wouldn't give a flying fuck if his life depended on it. That although it was a responsibility as his parent to care, he didn't have it in him. He was never cut out to parent a child. Perhaps, if Cece had stuck around, he would have stood a chance at being a decent dad but with her absence, nothing but apathy took her place.

He shook slightly in fury, a latent brand that nipped at his eyelids and threatened to break his composure.

Adam sat nearby, unmoving, as he wasn't sure how to gauge Eli.

"I hate him." Eli seethed to no one in particular, though of course Adam was within earshot.

He nodded solemnly, hesitant to fuel the fire that had already been lit for him.

Turning his head, he exhaled. "Are your parents like this?"

"Like what?"

Humorlessly, Eli scoffed. "Deadbeats."

Understanding showed on Adam's face. "Not in so many words. Though my mom can be a bit...much."

Quirking his brows, he gestured for the boy to continue on.

At once Adam seemed uncomfortable, wiping his hands on his napkin. "It's a long story,"

"I have all the time in the world. Currently I'm letting a drug sedate me to a point close to being comatose. I've got nothing better to do, unless you'd prefer I return my attention back to Winnie the Pooh."

Crinkling his nose at the book which still sat face down on the table, Adam relented. "...Do you know what an FTM is?"

Wracking his brain, Eli tried to find a definition for the abbreviation in his mind, to no avail. He shook his head.

"It stands for female to male transgender." Adam opened his mouth to speak again, but fell short for a moment. "Meaning, I'm all dude, like seriously, all dude. In my head, I am. But physically...I was born in a girl's body."

Out of knee-jerk reaction, Eli's eyes flew to his seemingly flat chest, in awe over the fact that he hadn't noticed sooner. As far as he could tell, Adam passed for a guy without question. Regaining his eye contact, he tried to mask his own shock. "So...you're a guy-"

"in a girl's body. Which sucks. Majorly. I've known since I was old enough to talk. But my mom still sees me as her little girl." His lips curled down in chagrin. "I can't get her to see Adam. She sees 'Gracie'."

"Gracie was your-"

"my name before I transitioned, yeah." he finished his sentence again. "So yeah, she can be unreasonable about it. And when she is, I resort to, well," Adam rolled up his sleeves, the marks Eli had previously seen upon meeting him more apparent up close. "and then she accused me of trying to kill myself. Which I _wasn't_." His voice was emphatic, and he could tell that it really was the truth. No one who wanted to end their lives would deny it so vehemently. "But she doesn't believe me. So she's making me stay here, even though I'll probably do it again when I get home when she gets on my case about things."

"Has she visited you?" Eli inquired carefully.

"Only to get emotional, break down in front of me and then tell my therapist to detain me longer." groaned Adam, rolling his eyes. "Which was why I was glad when you showed up. At first, I thought they'd make me share a room with a girl, but they get it here. And you get it, well I hope you do."

Quickly he nodded, in full understanding of the situation, though he couldn't say it was one he had encountered before. "You're all dude to me, seriously- as long as I can still let one rip around you."

The mood shifted from heavy to bearable in an instant, and it was a change both boys were grateful for.

"I'd be insulted if you didn't." Adam quipped back, knocking his shoulder against Eli's. "Now, Winnie the Pooh is calling you. We wouldn't want Clare to be disappointed when she visits you tomorrow, would we?"

A wide smile worked at the corners of Eli's mouth. Her name was enough to leave him exultant, even in his heavily medicated state . "No, we would not want that indeed..." he murmured as he lifted the book back up, mindlessly losing himself in the organized mayhem of The Hundred Acre Wood.

* * *

Eli felt a sense of relief, being out of the hospital attire and into a familiar pair of his skinny jeans and a band tee. No longer did he look quite as certifiably insane as he was. The paper bracelet around his wrist was enough of a reminder as it was.

The next few hours went by in mind-numbing bliss without much incident, Eli losing himself in Winnie the Pooh's antics until he reached the third to last page. Just then, a nurse wandered to the door.

"Eli? Someone on the payphone is calling for you." she stated, smiling cordially until she walked away.

The payphone, which was located in the far corner of the room right near his, was a place he figured he wouldn't be paying many visits to. He'd seen the fellow patients lining up near it, clamoring over who was taking too long using it and when they'd get their turn. It was a hectic sight he hoped he'd never subject himself to seeing as though the only one who had the number and knew he was there was Bullfrog. After the morning's events, his father oh so blatantly refusing to see him in person while he dropped off his clothes, Eli wondered if he even wanted to speak to him. It would no doubt be an attempt to apologize, however meager and forced it would turn out.

But without his consent, he could feel his feet shuffling from the bed to the door, letting himself out and then heading to the payphone. The phone was sitting idly, the ear and mouth piece resting on the table beside it. He knew the gruff, throaty voice that would greet him at the other end, and he knew how the sound would make him feel.

Or at least, he thought he knew.

"E-Eli?"

Her voice filled his ears and in turn, allowed him to breathe much needed oxygen into his lungs.

"Clare? You called me?"

There was a small pause at the other end. "Well, I mean, I called the hospital and asked to be connected in the small hope that I would reach you- but I knew I might not because I wasn't even sure if you had phones there so when the nurse put me through I just-"

"Edwards," he interrupted, still reeling from the fact that her voice was the one he'd been met with. "I'm glad you did."

Her sigh of relief was audible, though she tried to cover it up with a small cough. "I um, good. I just wanted to talk to you and all."

"You disrupted my time in The One Hundred Acre Wood, tsk tsk," chided Eli humorously, far preferring her company over the phone to the book.

"You're actually reading it?"

"I said I would for you, didn't I?"

The pause on the phone was one Eli could feel, as though the silent beat was circulating through his veins, rummaging through his whole body.

"You did." she whispered, as though it was a secret between them. In the way of Eli's ego and the preservation of it, it almost was. "And, your verdict?"

"Nearly done, three pages left. But I think it's safe to say that I haven't read a book like that in a while. Being on these meds only makes it more trippy..."

"Eli!" giggled Clare, and he knew had they been in person, he would have been the lucky recipient of an arm slap from her. "Are you feeling alright, on that note?"

Despite the heaviness that lurked behind his eyelids, and the static that seemed to be flooding through his mind at any given moment, he could admit that something – though he wasn't sure what – had changed in him. Or was beginning to. A seed for progress had been sown sometime in the week he'd been at the hospital. But a part of him wondered if that was the medication, or a remedy that lived within a pair of blue eyes, and a girl he wished he could call his own.

"I'm out of it. Wiped, I guess. But I don't feel like I want to..." he trailed off for her sake, remembering her reluctance to say the three syllable word. For some reason, he wasn't feeling callous enough around her anymore to say it himself. Her reaction to his wanting to die, the way her arms wound around him without a second thought still stayed with him. It was as though he could feel her phantom embrace whenever he needed it, which was an embarrassingly large amount of the time.

"That's good. That's really, really good, Eli." Clare's voice was firm but gentle, and he could tell she was proud of him. Even if he didn't deserve it, she was proud of him.

He switched ears and leaned against the wall next to the phone, rearranging the thoughts in his head in a coherent manner. "You...you've helped me so much. Why?"

Eli could hear the smile in her voice as she replied, "Why not?"

_Leave it to Clare to answer a question that simply. _

_And that perfectly._

"I don't feel like I deserved to meet you."

"How about you let me be the judge of that, hm?"

Chuckling, he nodded. "Can do. Oh, but uh, you're still coming by tomorrow, right?" He sounded needy and pathetic, and he hated that about himself. But if he got off the phone without asking, the question would keep him up all night. He needed the serenity that the promise of her presence could bring.

"Absolutely. I'm showing up right after school, so expect me sometime around two thirty."

There it was, the peace of mind. It swept through him and kept him sated. "I'll be waiting on bated breath."

"You're not the only one. See you tomorrow, Eli."

"See you, Clare."

He hung up the phone, his breathing a little easier, his thoughts a little clearer, and his burden loads lighter. Once science could figure out how to bottle up and put into capsules the cure that Clare Edwards so readily supplied, a medical breakthrough would be made. It should have troubled him, the confusion between what his priorities in getting better were. Somewhere in the back of his mind, it did. But it was something he could shove into the recesses of his mind for the time being, all in the hopes that somehow, it would add up to the same. If he was lucky, he might come out stronger from all of this, with her help.

The conversation mustered up some dusty motivation in Eli to actually interact with everyone around him, if only for the fact that it might aid in his getting released sooner. The thought of being with Clare outside of the sterilized, crowded hospital walls was an appealing one, and something he wouldn't jeopardize if his life depended on it.

* * *

Clare could feel someone standing behind her before she even turned. Though she was feet away, she could feel her mother all but breathing down her neck. Her presence was oppressive.

Calling Eli at home had been a mistake. One she was only fully realizing now.

"You're going _where_ after school at two thirty?" her mother's voice spoke from behind her.

Clare's blood ran cold as she turned to face her, the scrutinizing glare fixed in her expression only making her more fearful. At her sides, her hands trembled uncontrollably.

_This wasn't supposed to happen. She wasn't supposed to find out._

She chastised herself for being so rash, so impatient to call him. Was there even a need to call him? No, of course not. It could have waited until not even twenty four hours from then, when she'd sit beside him and discuss the bizarre assortment of books she would be bringing him, ones she had picked out just the night before.

"Clare Diana," she uttered again, her tone more clipped this time, "where are you going after school tomorrow?"

Defeated, Clare knew her mother would make it nearly impossible to see him. Not only the next day, but each one to follow. She wasn't the kind of woman one could bargain with, especially not when it came to Eli. Her father had ruined any and all chances of Helen ever coming around about the boy. While at home, Clare eradicated his name from her vocabulary, for fear of letting on to her visits to see him.

It only took ten minutes of her mother yelling, spewing words that Clare considered nonsense but her mother labeled 'good parenting' to put a complete halt to her plans. By the time her mom stormed out of the room, she was reduced to a sobbing heap on her bed, belittled and berated by her mother's lecture.

_I strictly forbade you from seeing him and what do you do? Run behind my back and visit him? Call him under my roof? He's a **bad influence** for you already. _

_A boy like that, Clare, a boy like that will **ruin you**. _

_I'll call the hospital myself and **make sure they don't let you see him**. You're not even related. You must have lied to get in there. _

_You're never seeing him again. I'll be picking you up directly from school every single day if I have to. **Never again, Clare**._

It all amounted to ringing in her ears in the aftermath, her face bloody red from the exertion of sobbing. Nothing could quell her nerves, unless someone was about to promise her she'd see his face again soon.

"I'm so sorry, Eli. I'm so _stupid_. I'm sorry," she mumbled into her pillow, though the words would fall on deaf ears. Her promise to see him the very next day felt like a lie now, one she would never stop hating herself for.


	7. Knee Deep

**I had this mega nice author's note all typed up, but FF kinda fucked up on me at the last moment. Bummer. **

**I'll do a brief recap of what I wrote. This chapter is a bit shorter than the last six, but no less important. It's actually a bit more so, seeing as though a plot twist will be revealed in it. Also, there's a bit of a time skip in this chapter, but all for a good reason. You'll see when you read. **

**I wanted to say I'm so, so appreciative of the feedback I've gotten on this story. I'm so glad some of you have fallen in love with this story like I have while writing it. **

**Also, I'm very excited because the band these titles and lyrics are by, Lydia, is releasing a new album very soon (i.e. five days from now) which means new songs to title after, and probably new inspiration. Impatient is a severe understatement for how I feel about it.**

**One last thing, then I'll shut up. I posted this, saw a mistake and then pulled it down before reposting. So if you got two notifications about it, my bad. **

**Without further ado, go ahead and read. Tell me what you think if you review, which I'd really appreciate. **

* * *

_I'll just runaway,_  
_I'll just runaway,_  
_Runaway from her,_

_So she don't see,_  
_Hope she don't see,_  
_All that wicked inside of me,_

_I don't want to wait,_  
_I don't want to wait,_  
_I don't want to wait,_  
_So I take my time,_  
_I take my time, _

_Everything I learned,_  
_Everything I learned,_  
_Forget it,_

_You tell me I fucked up well I guess I did then,_  
_Just take me back to that day_

A Monday had passed.

Then a Tuesday.

Which dragged out into a _WednesdayThursdayFriday, _rinse and repeat.

An aimless weekend, drugs circulating through his system that still made him feel like a walking, talking corpse. A marionette attached to thin, medicated strings, his limbs being pulled limply along.

Two therapy sessions, both of which he sat through, though he felt mentally absent for. His therapist was being more proactive in his recovery than he could ever pretend or hope to be.

He was almost blinded by the flurry of dates that had passed, and throughout them all, there was one constant:

The absence of that vivacious curly haired girl plaguing his life. The girl who put the brakes on his master plan, the one that still sat in the back of his head, just in case.

That _just in case_ was feeling more and more tempting as the days slipped by.

The books she left him sat beneath his bed, because he couldn't bear to look at them. She wouldn't show up to discuss them with him, would she? Was there even a point anymore?

The absolute pointlessness of it all ate at him, gnawing on his last bit of self preservation. Somehow, without his full knowledge, he'd begun to invest so much in this one girl. He hated how he was nearly choking on his own dependency. On the incidental nature of their friendship. It had been precarious from the start. A part of him had known it, but decided to cast the fact aside, deeming it unimportant.

All the while, he couldn't help but metaphorically kick himself in the ass for thinking he ever truly deserved her. After the ordeal with Julia, so carelessly letting her slip through his grasp, what made him think he ever deserved another shot at happiness? That he wasn't that same good for nothing piece of shit that wandered off into traffic? That begged death to collect him? It seemed backwards to him now, now that he wasn't blinded by his own idealism, the blissful rush that always accompanied thoughts of Clare.

He was a _burden _to her, and that was exactly the reason why she hadn't shown up that Friday. It was slowly dawning on him that her visit had probably been born entirely of guilt, as if she had felt obligated to see him. Anyone with as kind a heart as her would, but that hardly amounted to friendship or anything remotely close to it. He didn't want to be a duty for her, something that she felt inclined to do because of the circumstance they met in. The chance of anything occurring between the two of them had been ruined before he even landed himself in her father's car. She was the one to see him diving out in front of their vehicle, the one to take in his flustered and dejected state. As far as first impressions go, that had to have been the worst one he'd ever formed.

At this rate, he was buried knee deep in his infatuation for the girl, something he realized had probably been one sided all along. Doting over her perfectly coiled auburn curls and the look on her face when she first learned his name were quickly becoming Eli's favorite pastimes. He knew the entire situation had to have been too good to be true all along. It had an expiration date; one that was far sooner than he hoped.

His insides felt inflamed, a bundle of wreckage among the bones and nerves in his body. His thin frame was already forgetting what it felt like to be filled with her warmth, with the ridiculously potent comfort she offered. But his mind, that was the part that couldn't dig her out, expel her from his consciousness.

Nights that used to be filled with dreams of Julia and her bitter demise were now a terrifying mixture of her raven black air strewn across the asphalt, and Clare's tender smile and blue irises, both of which would elude him for the entirety of his slumber. How the two could coexist in his subconscious, he wasn't sure. But the tag team approach was one he couldn't handle, waking in a sweat each time.

While the situation he found himself in was about as unfortunate as they come, he could only be grateful for the fact that the four letter word hadn't had a chance to come into play. Eli was the type to fall hard and fast, blindsided by the immensity of his own emotion to a point where he had no way of knowing it was happening, until it was too late. Such was the case with Julia, and in hindsight, all he could do was laugh bitterly at his own naivety, how easily he forked himself over to his emotions. At fourteen, it seemed he couldn't know any better if he tried.

At seventeen, he wasn't any better off though.

Earlier that morning, he was told it would be Adam's last day – that although his mother was a nervous wreck about welcoming him home – she was antsy to have him back.

Selfishly, Eli wished Adam would have been able to stay longer, though he had arrived a week before him. Having Adam leave propelled him, making him wander dangerously close to the same landmine that got him in the hospital in the first place. Without his even realizing, the two had become close friends and, in turn, he managed to tell the boy things he generally didn't. About Julia and the way they met, along with the way they parted. Not once did he feel judged, something he feared when confiding in just about anyone else.

It left him to wonder, how would he get himself out of there? What would keep him from wreaking havoc on busy suburban streets? What would prove that he was mentally and emotionally stable enough to be let out into the world again? Despite the fact that he'd only been detained from it for two weeks, he was already becoming comfortably numb on the inside of those walls, safe from his own impulses and the endless influences that lurked just outside the hospital doors.

But at times, ones that were more lucid than the aforementioned ones, he knew it was an ignorant bliss that could only be held for so long. There was a life to return to. Regardless of whether or not he had been settled on ending his life, there were still engagements and responsibilities waiting out there for him. The same ones he'd been running from that night.

Endless homework, meetings with teachers to negotiate due dates and an impending play hanging in the balance- the authorship in question – were all waiting for him upon his return to normal life. The small part of him that still contained motivation yearned to force himself back out and dive headfirst into his writing, to distract himself and perhaps make something noteworthy of the experience.

Surely, it would have been far more enjoyable to do with Clare by his side, but every hour without a call or a visit from her only proved how alone he really was.

He couldn't even be enough for something he'd gone ahead and created all on his own. _That _was how pathetic he'd become. If only Julia could see the vacant shell he'd was now. It served him right.

The voice of doubt was always loudest at night, when he wondered if he even existed in this fictional, kindhearted angel's thoughts.

For his own well-being, he worked on convincing himself over the course of the next week that she had in fact been a figment of his imagination. Perhaps the most elaborate and detailed of them all, but she couldn't have been real. Whether it had been an act of pure disillusionment or his masochistic ways going out for a stroll- outdoing themselves this time around- meeting and knowing Clare had been a mixture of torture and joy. The torture was before and after, the joy in between.

It would have been easy enough to blame, (or credit) fate with their untimely meeting but doing so would enable Eli to wish for it to happen again. Where there's a will, there's a way – things of that nature. But if his psychosis was to blame for it, then where would there be room for it to repeat? With the right cocktail of medication and denial, she could be written off.

Or perhaps, she could be written in the first place. He resolved to pen her into a play one day, perhaps whenever he returned to everything real and unfeeling out there.

The whole experience- if he wanted it to- could be just as fictitious and all could be swept under the rug with the right dosage of apathy. The antidepressants were beginning to do their trick, clouding his mind just enough to keep those suicidal tendencies at bay.

A part of him fully realized how deeply embedded into his own psychosis it seemed to actually be considering the fact that Clare, a girl he rationally knew was very much real, couldn't be. But it was the only coping mechanism within arm's reach- the only one that would enable him to get through the stint at the hospital. The self-doubt and logic needed to be hushed, buried beneath his own desperation to return to some normalcy. Even if it ended up being short lived, anything beat living within those confines longer.

Over the next week and a half, ten days spent toiling with his own emotions and letting just enough out to constitute as recovery, Eli managed to get himself discharged. It came with multiple grumbles from Bullfrog, who couldn't hide his disdain for the idea of bringing Eli home if he tried. (Which, it should be made quite clear that no effort was applied to the task of feigning joy for having his only son home after three weeks on his behalf.)

Standing amidst the mayhem that stretched to every corner of his bedroom, he could almost feel relieved to be back in familiar surroundings. There was a bittersweet tinge to it all, but he couldn't hold back the sigh that erupted from his lips as he laid back on his own mattress. No cheap ass, flimsy bed in a hospital could compare to the one in his own room. Eli wished to sink into it for years, eventually emerging a more rested, somewhat healthier version of himself. If only such a thing was possible.

Even though he'd been cleared to leave and given a sturdy pat on the back for not offing himself, Eli still wished for it. The desire to become worm food wasn't far at all, only placed on the back burner. There would be a right time, he knew. Whether it was three hours from then or three years, his attachment to everything worldly around him was flimsy and apt to break. A push off his proverbial ledge would send him sprinting back out into the street, armed with a better plan; one that wouldn't fail in its first execution.

Until then, he planned to get back into his normal routine as quickly as possible, choosing to return to school the very next day. It wouldn't pay to loaf around his house where he was not only unwelcome, but sincerely uncomfortable. There was work to be done in the theatre department, and it would be enough to keep his attention captive until more pressing matters required it.

* * *

She wore the guilt like a heavy chain around her neck, letting it drag her down as she trudged from class to class. The thought of being picked up by her helicopter mom after school remained in her thoughts the entire time, the opportunity to see Eli again shot to hell while she was under her watchful eye.

It wasn't fair. That was the only thing Clare had deduced in her time under proverbial lock and key.

It wasn't fair that she met him the way she had, under such a bizarre circumstance and in such precarious surroundings. It was as if their friendship didn't stand a chance at going anywhere right from the start. She felt cheated out of the experience.

But it also wasn't fair to him that now, instead of spending time beside him in the hospital, talking over the books she'd brought and making sure he was alright, she was worrying relentlessly over the boy without a means to contact him. It all felt like a cruel joke.

Her thoughts drifted to him without her meaning to, her eyes glazing over in thoughtfulness until Katie seated herself on the chair across from her.

"Earth to Clare? Anyone home in there?"

Snapping from her reverie, Clare forced a small smile though it almost pained her. "My goodness, yes. All here." she murmured without conviction, the distant expression she still wore betraying her.

"You lie like a rug, Edwards." admonished Katie, a sly but knowing smile painting her lips.

Rolling her eyes, she pushed an unruly curl behind her ears and glanced down at the notepad on the table. She hadn't written anything for the entirety of the Daily meeting, her thoughts too wrapped up in everything except school. Everything revolving around Eli. It wasn't something she wanted to talk about though, not after the reception she'd received from Alli and her parents. Neither were very understanding on the topic, both returning frequently to the terms "crazy" and "bad influence". She'd heard all she could take, finally learning her lesson in keeping her mouth shut about the boy.

"I guess I've been moderately distracted." relented Clare, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth and chewing on it nervously, a telltale sign of her lying.

Wearing a more serious expression, Katie tilted her head down to be somewhat eye level with her. "Is it something at home? Or boy trouble?"

Huffing a breath out through her nose at the latter question, she nodded. "I suppose you could say that, though it's not that simple."

"It never is. But you know what the best remedy for boy trouble is? Other than ice cream and Mean Girls, that is."

The comment won a smile out of Clare who then cocked a brow, waiting for her reply.

"Throwing yourself into your work. Which is exactly what I'm going to need you to do tomorrow."

Shifting her eyes back to her notepad and then to Katie, Clare felt baffled. "But the director and writer of the play isn't even set yet, is it? I can't interview someone who isn't even there."

"And that," Katie said with a flourish, pulling a piece of paper from her own folder out and handing it to Clare, "is where you would be wrong. Said director has been chosen and he's coming back to school tomorrow, in fact."

With her stomach beginning to knot in a way that made Clare feel as though she already knew what was coming before she truly did, as though she'd suddenly been blessed with a clairvoyance she didn't even desire, she reached for the paper. On it was a series of twenty questions that would briefly outline the concept of the play, the characters, inspiration and plans for set design.

"You'll have to interview him tomorrow afternoon, after school. It'll be a series of interviews as the play goes on, so you'll be working closely together-"

"Wait," Clare interjected, her heart beginning to hammer in a foreboding rhythm in her chest. "Who exactly is directing the play this year?"

She wasn't sure why she had even asked. From the moment Katie mentioned the director suddenly being back, she had known. She knew, but required that clarification to thoroughly bury herself in that sense of impending doom. And rising anticipation.

"Eli Goldsworthy. Grade eleven, writer, wears black all the time, you know who I'm..." Katie trailed off, the words mangling and twisting together around Clare, blurring out.

Eli Goldsworthy. The boy who aimed to take his own life and failed because of her. This meant he was out of the hospital, out in the open where he could attempt it all over again.

But he was returning to school, why? And why hadn't she previously assumed that eventually he would? She felt naïve and dense now, shaking head head slightly to herself. If his death wish was truly that withstanding, so nagging that he was willing to lie and bargain his way there, why would he even bother going back to school? What was the point?

What would she do when she saw him?

He wasn't the stranger she thought she'd be interviewing for the article on the play. Instead, he was the same boy in a different scenario, but the same memories would live between them. Was there any way to ignore them and coexist? Clare had all but beaten it into her skull that he hated her by now Any semblance of a friendship the two had created was broken and killed by her mother's eavesdropping that night. It was something Eli didn't know, but she couldn't conjure up a method of letting him know either. The mere idea of being in his presence again was enough to leave her saturated in nerves, her pulse throbbing underneath her skin uncomfortably.

"Clare? Is everything alright?"

Mechanically, her head bobbed up and down in a nodding motion, just to quell the questions. She couldn't handle the questions others might have had when she couldn't even answer her own. The ones that had been hanging over her head like a rain cloud for weeks.

_Did he hate her? If so, was there anything she could do to reverse it?_

_Was he still on his meds? How was he handling them?_

_Did he finish those last three pages of Winnie the Pooh?_

It had never been a case of consciously letting him slip away. Had she had it her way, Clare wouldn't have left the boy's side for the world. Her initial promise not to go anywhere at all had been a genuine one, even if she couldn't live up to it. These things were outside of her control, so far from her from influence. All she had ever wanted was to shower a sizable bit of light on him, enough to break him loose from his burdens.

That last moment, watching his face soften as the elevator doors closed, she thought perhaps she'd made a dent in it. A small dent, but one nonetheless.

That progress could be undone in a day, in an hour even for someone as hellbent on dying and suffering as Eli was. She'd never known someone who despised every breath sucked into their lungs before him. Who begrudged every morning they woke up instead of viewing it as a blessing.

He lacked a support system within his family- his arrogant and clearly neglectful father hardly acting as he should and his mother presumably absent for one reason or another. It was something she couldn't stomach, how alone Eli seemed.

Without meaning to, she added to that list, penning her name down along with the rest that she could only imagine pushed him to such desperate measures. So easily, she could be apart of the reason for his next attempt.

Bringing herself back to the present moment, she made herself sit up straighter in her chair and tucked the paper away, dreading the next time she would bring it out. "When do I meet with him?" she asked curtly, pushing her emotions back for the time being.

"After school tomorrow, in the auditorium. I hear he's supposed to be brainstorming with the rest of the crew. It would be a good time to take notes and such, ask him about his ideas."

"Right, right..." Clare mumbled, gathering her belongings and shoving them haphazardly into her bag. There was still a half hour left to the meeting, but she knew it would be thirty minutes too long for her to handle. "Tomorrow. Got it."

Rising from the chair, she hastily stole away to the hall, not bothering to stop at her locker before leaving from the side exit. Even the rush of air from outside wasn't enough to return the oxygen to her lungs, all of it swiped with five syllables. Fourteen letters. Two words that made her feel indebted to the universe and like a complete failure.

How could she have had any idea that Eli, of all people, would be the one she'd have to interview? And it wouldn't just be a one time excursion, as Katie had stated. It would go on for the entirety of the production. Months. The next two months, at the least. Eight weeks with a boy she still couldn't get over her feelings for, but knew probably resented her. It made her heart sick to imagine how she might see him now, out of his hospital attire and back within society. If he'd still wear that look of hopelessness, or if it had been replaced with one of medicated bliss.

Was her Eli still hiding somewhere underneath it all? Was there anything to salvage?

The questions continued to chase each other in dizzying circles as she waiting for her mother to pick her up, still holding up her end of the arrangement. There was no use in resisting anymore, seeing as though Eli wasn't even at the hospital anymore. In her possession was less than twenty four hours to mentally prepare. Each minute was rushing by faster than the last, and she knew that it was an impossibility to ever be prepared. Not with the built up dread living in her chest, multiplying in intensity over the past weeks. It would all come to a head upon seeing him again, and the outcome was something she couldn't imagine if she tried.


	8. Now The One You Once Loved Is Leaving

**I hit a pretty big block for a bit, but I think I worked past it. Here's hoping the updates come more smoothly, but as always, no promises. I really don't have much to say so...enjoy. Review if you like, I'd appreciate it.**

* * *

_Suddenly, a cloud must have cut a hole in my head,  
__When I was tangled all in your words.  
__How quick to forget,  
__We are,  
__With eyes unimpressed  
__You're sealing the conversations.  
__And are you wondering how things could be?  
__Just staring at the surface,  
__When all the walls have tendencies.  
__But it's not your fault when no one taught you how._

_And now the one you once loved is leaving._

_You're so sure that I'd be just fine here._  
_But you were surely just taking your own time dear._

All day, the sense of impending doom hung over her. It swallowed her in a blanket and wound around her neck unrelentingly. Clare hadn't eaten breakfast or lunch, and the dull aching in her stomach from hunger was the least of her concerns, even as ninth period began. Every function she should have been paying more attention to took a backseat. She wasn't sure why she was hovering near her locker, silently and absentmindedly admiring the posters that decorated the metal compartment.

She didn't know when the steady drumming in her chest would feel less like a parade and more like a heart functioning normally. Waiting for it to slow down wasn't panning out at all like she would have hoped. The longer she stood idle, the more steady the pounding grew, compensating for her lack of movement otherwise.

All throughout the day, from seven thirty three am when she moseyed on in to two twenty five pm, when she presently stood at her locker, she made a point to look around in the halls. It was an act of self-torture, she knew. Eying around for him would benefit no one, and she wasn't likely to spot him anyway.

She caught plenty of boys with_ his_ shaggy, black hair. She saw a few with_ his _bow shaped lips and a couple who probably were trying (and failing) to adopt_ his _trademark lopsided smirk. But none of them were Eli, and all of them succeeded in tightening the knot in her belly.

Their brief interactions had left a definite mark on her, only embellishing her regret in the way things turned out. The gentleness he exuded to her, even when he was clearly on his last rope. Or how he offered his hand to hers when initially entering the hospital.

While a part of her dreaded seeing him, especially considering he probably wasn't expecting to be met with her, she couldn't stave off the small satisfaction she felt in it all. Her mother had sought to keep them apart, but in school, there was nothing she could do to keep her away from Eli. In school, he wasn't a patient in a hospital. He was a student, just the same as her with the same intentions in mind. It wasn't intentional rebellion but it still made Clare grin a bit, finding a small upside to the mess. Even if seeing him would be met with terrible results more likely than not, no one could stand in the way of them anymore.

She knew the longer she stood by her locker like an imbecile, the more difficult it would be to face the music. It wouldn't have been a stretch to even talk herself out of the meeting. Someone else could work on the article, surely. And she could take over something else in the meanwhile, if only Katie was so accommodating. She ran a tight ship, one with little wiggle room and the definite risk that her position on The Daily would be revoked.

Reluctantly, she shut her locker and pulled her bag further up her shoulder, gripping onto it for some small sense of balance as she wandered to the auditorium. Her feet weighed a million tons each and her head seemed to weigh double that, a pulsing, pinching sensation brewing at her temple. The mere thought of him could evoke such heavy physical symptoms in her, as if the flu had suddenly hit her full force.

_It's all stress. You're psyching yourself out_, she mused to herself, a meager attempt at soothing her own nerves. But they were so far gone, she didn't stand a chance in hell at composing herself before she reached the double doors leading to the room, where her fate inevitably waited for her.

Her hand gripped the handle of the door, her inner masochist choosing to prolong the torture by waiting a moment before she walked in. Every possible daunting mental image began flooding her as she eyed the tiny gathering of people up near the stage, a good twenty five or so feet separating her from them.

_Twenty five feet to calm down. _

_Twenty five feet to ensure that I don't become sick all over the auditorium floor. _

Working herself into a further state of panic was something Clare was all too good at, her cheeks already betraying her by turning a wild shade of red. She felt like an odd piece of furniture; something that slipped in by accident and everyone would be set on getting rid of quickly. She would disrupt the balance of the room, the balance of Eli's life – once again.

Or perhaps, he wasn't mad at her. The chances were slim and she wouldn't let herself dwell on them for fear of storing up false hope, but the notion that he might not hate her was one that relieved the tiniest bit of tension from her tummy. Even if it also served as false hope.

At first, she couldn't spot him. A girl with cat ears strutted about the stage happily, seemingly lost in her own daydream and a few other people looked to the stage, pointing about and chatting with each other, but she couldn't spot _him _immediately. Not until she looked to the left corner of the stage, where a figure dressed in black from head to toe stood.

She froze in place, her heart finally ending its tirade in her worn out chest. It might as well have stopped for good as far as she was concerned.

Seeing him outside of the environment she first had was a shock to her system. He didn't look frightful, vulnerable under the dim stage lights above him. He didn't don the hospital gown or the hunched back he'd acquired when she visited him last.

If she hadn't known better, she wouldn't have recognized him at all.

Eli exuded a confidence up on the stage that she wasn't sure previously he even possessed- one masked beneath his suicide attempt while at the hospital. The weakened, emotionally battered boy glowed in the environment he was currently in. It made her glow to see him in his element, which was clearly theatre and everything along that vein. To think, someone with such a gifted and talented mind was ready to give it all up, when their potential hadn't even been tapped into yet. It seemed all too often that that really was the case. The people with the most capability were the ones who could see it themselves the least.

Slinking away to an inconspicuous seat nearby, Clare was within earshot to some of their conversation, but his voice rang out the loudest. The sound was still capable of awakening something in her, her stomach fluttering obnoxiously with a mixture of butterflies and nerves.

She only caught snippets of his words from where she sat but the conviction in his tone was enough to leave her convinced of whatever he was saying. There was passion and interest in his tone. He could have rallied a whole crowd about anything he wanted, she deduced. His charisma onstage was undeniable, and he wasn't even acting.

Clare knew it would be all too easy to sit there and admire him silently, but that wasn't what she had arrived for. Without getting an interview from him, she knew Katie wouldn't hesitate to drop her from the paper, and it was one of the few things Clare had going for her at school.

Aside from that, she couldn't deny how badly she wanted to be near him. Seeing him in this new perspective was terrifying but equally as alluring. She wondered now, if she hadn't met him at the hospital and made his acquaintance in a normal circumstance such as this one instead, would she have fallen for him? His style was just as dark as she assumed it might be, and she would have been lying if she said it wasn't attractive to her. He had the makings of everything she wasn't, perhaps her exact antithesis. It drew her to him like moths to a flame. Knowing what lied beneath that surface only made him more appealing to her.

Shifting forward in her seat, she shimmied to the edge until the old audience chair made a distinct squeaking noise, one that managed to echo throughout the entire room and carry up to the front. All eyes were on her in a nanosecond, her face contorting into a cringe.

It _would_ be her luck, she reasoned.

Without missing a beat, she noticed the girl with the cat ears frolicking towards her, skipping the now fifteen or so feet that distanced them, a cheeky smile adorning her face as she neared. Scooting back into her chair, Clare kept her head bowed though there was no point. Everyone there had already noticed she was there. Even Eli.

"Pleased to meet you! I'm Imogen Moreno." she proudly announced, her chipper voice almost sending a chill down Clare's spine. Slowly she looked up, offering a meek smile and a wave of her hand.

"Clare. Clare Edwards." she muttered with a shy nod, the apples of her cheeks taking on a rosy hue once more. Meeting new people, especially out of pure accident and humiliation, was always a challenge to social inept Clare.

"Were you hoping to join Drama club? We're always looking for new members!" The enthusiasm was clear as day on the girl's face, but joining the club was out of the question. Associating with it was the very root of her anxiety, never mind actually pushing herself to be a joiner and take part. Theatre had never been her niche, a fact she was perfectly comfortable with.

Glancing up towards the stage, she could feel and see Eli's eyes on her but she quickly averted her own, her curls bouncing around her face as she shook her head in reply. "I'm actually here from the Daily, for the-"

"Oh! The interview!" Imogen beamed, her expression somehow growing even more excited than it had been seconds before. It was beyond Clare how someone could muster up that much enthusiasm for anything, let alone her arrival. "Eli's here! He'll be writing the play so he's the guy you need to see!"

His name made her face go from maroon to pink, to pale white, to a corpse-like complexion. Luckily, the jovial girl failed to notice this as she grabbed her by the hand, tugging Clare along to the front of the expansive room. She kept her gaze fixed on the floor as she was pulled forward, refusing to watch Eli as she wandered up.

This was it. He would be there and if the bomb was about to drop, she would be out of time to prepare for it. There was no more time to replay the scenario in her head obsessively like she had been. All of her panicking had been for naught, as it hadn't done an ounce of good in preparing her for this pivotal moment. No defense mechanism she could conjure up would prove effective, not when she'd done so much damage to her own nerves with her over-thinking and daydreaming. She had imagined up the moment so frequently that in her mind, it had already happened a dozen or more times, all with a variety of outcomes. The more positive of them were a rarity, and even in the moment, Clare knew better than to hold her breath for one.

What she wasn't expecting when she looked up was to find Eli missing – as though he had vanished into thin air before she could even register his true existence. Imogen saw this as well, her lips twisting into a small frown. "Where'd that boy run off to?" she questioned to the group, most of them pointing to a back room on the stage, a few others shrugging.

"He thinks he's Houdini, that Elijah. I swear." She stamped her feet a bit before looking back to Clare, who forced a smile though she could feel the tears pricking at her eyes. He must have noticed her. She wasn't the type to stick out like a sore thumb but why else would he be missing, right when she got close? No matter what, the boy was elusive and if he wasn't willing to speak to her, the air would never be cleared. The uncertainty as enough to choke Clare, her chest tightening as she fought to keep her cool. "I'll go get him, kay? Don't go anywhere!"

The urge to escape and abandon her task for the paper was strong, but she resolved to stay put. This wasn't about the hospital, or her mother or whatever friendship they could have had. This was about the play and the interview she needed. With such a professional approach, a conflict could be avoided. At least, she hoped.

* * *

A quote from Tennessee Williams had been stuck in Eli's head as of late, one that he was drawing inspiration from for the play:

___"All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness."_

Of frankness, or of uninhibited kindness. He found that the latter brand was more harmful than the former. A wolf in sheep's clothing, so unassuming and docile in appearance, but equipped with the ability to break a person down effortlessly. To knock down walls only in the hopes of leaving them vulnerable and distraught. Alone in the face of all of their inner demons.

Why did she have to enter his life? It had already been difficult enough without the promise of something to live for being stolen from him – snatched from his hands before he even got the chance to grasp it.

To him,_ that _was what made up a cruel person. One who could so easily convey care one moment, and the next, abandon you. One who had no second thoughts about pushing themselves into your consciousness, only to deem you unworthy of their attention later. The chain around her neck with a cross suspended from it almost had him convinced of salvation – that he could find redemption if he tried hard enough. Not in the form of a deity or anything of a higher power, seeing as though he didn't have it in him to believe. But in_ her_ instead. That redemption had taken the form of a 5'4 angel with perfectly curled hair. With eyes bluer than the clearest of skies and a voice he wanted to wrap himself inside of like a security blanket.

But he had only been lulled into a false sense of security. A harsh one to be torn from.

Eli had yet to realize that perhaps he had put Clare Edwards up on a pedestal she never desired to be placed on. One that was humanly impossible for anyone to live up to. But she smelled like faith renewed and appeared like a godsend for him. How could he not begin to believe that she would be the thing to save him? How could _anyone_ resist having that faith in her?

Yet here she was, standing in the auditorium, for no reason he could fathom up on short notice. She wouldn't even look at him, resisting any and all eye contact he tried to create. It was as if he hadn't left a mark on her at all, that she had gotten away unscathed, but he hadn't been so lucky.

His fists remained balled up at his sides to resist flailing them out as he paced in the backroom of the auditorium, among the countless props littering the area. He was boxed in, at a dead end, the only way to leave would be to face Clare again if she was even there. But he couldn't stand seeing her so composed when it felt like the few threads holding him together were threatening to break again. He was a poorly stitched, hardly composed being. Eli was mostly comprised of antidepressants and meager coping mechanisms. Counting to ten until he calmed down, going to his "quiet" place, snapping the rubber band around his wrist – every method was laughable now. In the face of his most recent source of anxiety, he was reduced to an unhinged version of himself. As if he ever could have been described as hinged in the first place.

He wanted so badly to just _not care- _to push aside any and all memories of the girl to salvage what had been a reasonably peaceful first day back. Even with the inquiries about why he had been gone for three weeks, Eli easily created a series of lies to cover his tracks, making it so no one had to know his business. School life would be able to go on uninterrupted until further notice, creating at least one stable environment for him. Drama Club had been his safe haven, and the one thing he genuinely looked forward to returning to. But the only person who truly knew of his whereabouts in his absence managed to follow him there. The girl was impossible to escape, he was realizing.

She had made a mention of going to school and Eli knew now that he should have assumed they went to the same one, even if he hadn't ever seen her there before. They lived in the same area presumably, and now that she was there, it all added up. He still couldn't figure out why she was there in plain sight though- what made it so their paths would cross for the first time at school when they hadn't before. His pacing didn't help clear his head, instead driving him further into his little bubble of insanity.

"God, no. No. God fucking...no..." he ranted to himself, his fingers threaded shakily in his hair, knotting it up as he tugged.

"Eli? Someone's here to-"

He jumped nearly two feet in the air at the sound of Imogen's voice, mistaking it for Clare's. Did he even remember what Clare's voice sounded like? He'd imagined it so frequently that he was beginning to believe it was all becoming a work of fiction. The pitch probably wasn't right, neither was the tone. The inflection would forever fall short of her true way of speaking. How could he ever accurately create her in his play?

But she had been right there a moment ago, hadn't she?

"Where did she go?"

Imogen paused, her face falling just a bit. "You know her? The girl here for the Daily?"

_The Daily?_ Clare was on the staff for _the Daily?_ _That _was why she was there?

Yet again, he had managed to convince himself that she might have showed up for him, to make amends. Maybe he wasn't the only one dwelling, and it was just a matter of clearing the air. But no. It never panned out so easily for him.

The surprise showed on his face, though he tried to regain some stoicism in spite of it. "Why? What does she need here?" he questioned, though it should have been apparent to him already. It would have been, had he not been so occupied with the notion that the very girl he was trying to avoid stood just outside the door, waiting for him.

"She needs to interview you for the play. She'll be covering it all the way through. Eli, this could be so good! If she covers it and the whole school reads it, we could-"

Lifting a hand to halt her enthusiastic ranting, Eli turned his back to the girl, leaning against a wall for support.

"...do you not like Clare Edwards?" Imogen asked cautiously, mousy, as though he might strike out at her if she spoke any louder.

Why was everyone so damn afraid of him?

Rubbing his face angrily, he let out an unintelligible mumble, then realizing she couldn't have possibly heard him. "We have history, let's just say."

The vague reply didn't sate Imogen's curiosity at all but she obviously knew better than to persist, instead rocking uncomfortably on her heels. "What are you going to do then? You're the writer, the director. We need you."

_If only she needed me too. _

His heart didn't show any signs of relinquishing its current pace, hammering around tirelessly inside his tired chest, but the threat of a panic attack swallowing him whole was retreating. It was enough composure to make him believe perhaps, he could handle speaking to her.

Without another word, he nodded to her and stepped out, seeing that Clare was still standing just where she had been before he left, her arms crossed about her torso.

Even though he felt miles away from her, even with the actual short distance between them, she was still the most breathtaking creature to him. He couldn't help but try to capture her in every piece he'd been writing as of late, most importantly the play for Drama Club. She was the best source of inspiration – innate, classic beauty, tenderness, soft cherubic features. And it all masked the ugliness beneath. She was the best villain he'd ever seen. So good that he couldn't help but fall for her, even now.

Just as he had at the hospital, once more he needed to remind himself that Clare Edwards- or at least the Clare he had known- was nothing more than a figment of his imagination. She was no more real than the demons plaguing his thoughts, and no more tangible than the ease that swept through him at her arrival.

Keeping this in mind, he approached her with a wide grin. "Eli Goldsworthy, pleasure to meet you."

* * *

"E-excuse me?" Clare stammered, choking on the speech she had prepared in her head for him. She had planned to pull him aside, to explain the situation with the Daily, and wanted to let him know that she would back off if that was what he chose. It wouldn't have been fair to rope him into a situation he was clearly uneasy with, even though she still longed for a chance to fully explain the situation to him.

But here he was introducing himself, though they had already met one another. She couldn't dissuade herself of the fact; the two _had_ met before. She wasn't losing her mind.

"What, don't like my name?" Eli rebutted playfully, a self-assured version of himself surfacing. As though he truly believed he didn't have any recollection of her. But that couldn't be the case. There was no way.

"N-no, no, it's just-"

"Just what?" he interjected, leaning in a bit closer, his eyebrows quirked at her challengingly. Their proximity would have made her pulse quicken and heart leap moments before. But now, it left her feeling disconcerted, jerking herself back a bit from him.

She smiled weakly, pleadingly at him. "Eli, you know this isn't the first time-"

Interrupting again, Eli tilted his head at her. "I'm sorry, what did you say your name was? Or did you not say it yet?"

Clare's blood began to boil at his obvious avoidance of the subject. Perhaps he didn't want to explain to everyone how he knew her, and in turn why had had been gone. It was understandable; she would have easily lied to help him keep his privacy. But he was blatantly denying their prior knowledge of one another.

Against her better judgment, it offended her. She felt pangs in her chest at the utter indifference living in his gaze.

"My name is Clare." she forced out, her lips pressing into a thin line obstinately, attempting to snap him out of whatever fog he'd lost himself in. To recognize her, acknowledge her.

"Clare...?" he queried on, his grin only growing. To everyone else, he must have seemed polite, even interested in working together to create an article for the paper. But to her, it was a blatant arrogance that threatened to break her cool facade, to open the flood gates she'd resolved to keep closed not long before.

"Edwards. My name is Clare Edwards." she spat out, her tone rising in pitch, earning a few puzzled looks from nearby members of the club.

From Eli she garnered a knowing smirk, his eyes piercing into hers. "Now was that so hard?" he prodded, a harshness dwelling in his voice.

She came up empty on what she hoped was a rhetorical question anyway. Though she fought to keep her eyes on him, she eventually failed, dropping her gaze away from his seething green orbs, and to the floor beneath them.

Her attention only jerked back to him once more when he piped up."You need an article for the Daily? I'll give you one. I just need a day to get my ideas together, we're brainstorming right now."

With her mouth hanging slightly agape, Clare looked to him skeptically. "You'll do the interviews for me?"

He barked out a laugh, one loud enough to make her jump a bit. It was hard to believe that he had ever been mild, vulnerable even after their initial run in. This Eli was callous and calculating. He knew how to set her on edge, and he enjoyed every moment of it. "For you? No. For us? The club? Yes, without a doubt," he stated, nodding his head at her. "And it'll be the best damn article you've ever written, Miss Edwards. I can promise that much."

The boiling in her veins turned to a deep chill, once again losing her capability to maintain eye contact with him. "I-I..." Her first attempt to speak faltered, her voice stuttering a bit. Eli chuckled, once again renewing her desire to stand up to him. He was being a bully, the one thing she never chalked him up to be.

If she was a stranger in his eyes, then he could be just the same to her. She surely didn't know this version of him, he was as good as completely unfamiliar.

"When do we meet for the first interview then?" she asked, focusing her eyes on his determinedly, removing all traces of fear or discomfort from her expression.

He hardly so much as flinched at her shift, his grin only growing a bit more forced, as though he was having trouble keeping up the mask himself. "Tomorrow. Same time. The library."

With a curt, brief nod, Clare tugged her bag more onto her shoulder, fixing a convincing smile on her face. "Lovely. Tomorrow it is, Eli. It was a pleasure to meet you." Before she could lose whatever control over the situation she had gained, she turned on her heels and left through the same doors she had entered, quickly leaving the building and taking in a large breath of fresh air.

The boy she'd just spoken to wasn't Eli. Not the one with a broken, but golden heart. Not the one who read Winnie the Pooh just to make her happy. And certainly not the one she still had very genuine feelings for.

But that didn't mean he wasn't lurking somewhere just beneath it. Her mission to get an article out of him for the paper was quickly morphing into something else – a desperate attempt to find that redeeming factor; to uncover the boy she had fallen for.


	9. I've Never Seen A Witch

**Roughly four more chapters to go on this bad boy. Then we're done. **

**Enjoy, review. Especially the latter, since I look forward to those.**

* * *

_You start to scream like we're_  
_making a scene_  
_I must remind you this is not a movie, no_  
_you couldn't help but play the queen_  
_you left them, all at your feet_

_Speak quite a storm with a small mouth_  
_and I barely sleep in my,_  
_in my own house_  
_Stare, stare at me and I,_  
_and I might transform_

_All hail the queen still_  
_I've never seen a witch this mean_

Arriving thirty minutes early was overkill. It made him look overly eager, perhaps too prepared. But he needed to be that prepared. Nothing could take the edge off for him, not when he knew he'd soon be meeting with Clare for their first interview. Imagining more to come left his head spinning, hardly knowing how to survive through the impending one.

All of his past coping mechanisms were currently rendered useless, either blocked out by the steady stream of medication swallowed once at night and once in the morning, or because he _knew_ he shouldn't resort to it. The one thing that had gotten through to him while at the hospital was the fact that hacking away at his flesh wouldn't solve anything. As tempting as the compulsion felt, he'd disposed of all of his razors upon returning home, deeming them useless. At least, trying to convince himself of the fact.

The otherwise quiet library was filled with a persistent snapping noise about ten minutes into his waiting, the rubber band around his wrist flicking against his flesh with a biting sting. It barely put a dent in his anxiety, not truly alleviating any of it. But beggars weren't choosers, and Eli had never been a chooser.

After a while, the snapping eased him up just enough to concentrate on the task at hand. Gingerly, he pulled out his notebook from his backpack, consciously making sure to do so quietly after his racket with the band snapping. He still felt like a trauma victim, as though he'd been in the hospital for a collapsed lung or a broken spine instead of a hairline fracture in his mind. Everything he did was still careful, cautious. As though he was apt to crumble at any point. No one knew the things he'd endured in the past few weeks, with the exception of the company he was expecting in roughly eight minutes. Letting on that he was seconds away from cracking wasn't in his plans, though he knew it wasn't far from coming into fruition.

But as he saw her approaching – earlier than intended – each pound of his heart felt like a thunderclap, scaring him from his own reverie. She _scared_ him. Terrified him. At one point in time, Eli had himself convinced that only a ghost, a specter of his past could leave him shitting his pants, avoiding sleep simply to run from the nightmares. But exhaustion always won out, and that brown eyed beauty would forever be perched at the cusp of his subconscious, waiting for the right time to strike.

Still, Clare Edwards woke up a dormant part of him that feared a mortal just as much as he could fear someone who was dead and gone, six foot under. He'd spent a great portion of his life to date with Julia, so he could understand how she'd become so deeply routed in his thoughts. But with Clare, roughly five weeks hardly constituted as long enough to create a bond. Especially when three of them were spent without her. Pining after someone didn't bring you any closer to them, only farther away from the truest facets of their personality.

No matter which way he tried to spin the situation in his mind, he'd already created a dozen versions of Clare in his mind; each one more malicious than the last. Rationally, he knew she was nothing monstrous or fearful in and of herself. If he had had it in him to think clearly, he would have come to the conclusion that Clare was nothing short of an angel embodied, sent down to Earth to do some deed. Fix him. Change him. Ruin him. Mar him. He was enough of a masochist to accept it all.

But his mind felt riddled with clutter, almost as though fluid was flooding it and impairing his normal thought process. He couldn't see past the bitter resentment of being left alone to fend for himself while at the hospital, without her comforting gaze or eclectic taste in literature. With her unanticipated exit from his life, she took with her all of the sanity and stability he'd gained with her entrance.

She wandered just outside the library doors, chatting with a brunette girl, one he'd never seen before. Had he really worn blinders for the entire time he'd been at Degrassi? Only now was he realizing people like Clare and those she interacted with were around. His introspective nature had always taken priority when it came to interacting with others, and feeling so alienated was the proof of it.

Eli should have cared more about it- forced himself to resemble something similar to an average social teen. But it felt too fabricated. He didn't have it in him to offer genuine friendship, his bonds with even those in Drama Club feeling more like a means to an end more than anything else. Genuine friendship was something he craved, but felt was beyond his grasp. Remaining on the outer fringes merely looking in seemed to be his niche, even if it meant an unbearable loneliness that he couldn't even own up to.

Hearing her flats pitter patter along the library floor, Eli shot his eyes down to his notebook, looking incredibly engaged in his own scrawled musings on the sheet.

_Drama/Tragedy?_

_Tragedy with a surprising plot twist pleasant ending?_

_No. Tragedy. Only a tragedy._

His thoughts bounced back and forth on the sheet, echoing back his own befuddlement on the matter. He'd never been one for a happy ending, that much he knew right off the bat. But when it came to him and Clare, picturing a bitter ending seemed all too realistic, as though it wasn't a work of fiction at all, but a mirror of reality. They'd already reached their bitter end before they could even have a joyous start.

Which was why this tale couldn't begin at the beauteous beginning. The timeline had to span from the beginning of the breakdown, to the end of the tale. And oh, how it would crescendo, the rising action even giving him goosebumps, though he was the one to piece it together. It was times like these that Eli was grateful for his overactive imagination, even though at other times, it only landed him in trouble.

When she was right before him, she cleared her throat, a cute noise intended to gain his attention bubbling from her throat. He wanted to smile, hearing her tiny squeak of a voice. But he couldn't. At least not genuinely.

Mustering up the most convincing smirk he could, he looked up at her, acting as though he hadn't seen her arrive at all. She was five minutes early. Nothing on his thirty, but still noteworthy.

"Miss Edwards," he greeted her, still carrying on the facade that they'd never met one another at the hospital. It was his safety net, the only lie that would keep him together through this process. He needed this play. He needed it like a man in the desert needs water, like a pilot needs a properly working engine to weather the storm of a journey, like a virgin needs deflowering on her wedding night after a five year long engagement. It was the only thing letting him maintain some semblance of his prior control on the situation. The last shred of his self-worth was already embedded in the production and the creation of it. No one could rip that away from him, not even Clare.

_Especially _not Clare_._

The discomfort in her stance was palpable, as if it was transferring from her bones to his, seeping in through the pores of his skin. Eli shrugged it off, knowing she deserved it, after everything that was already said and done.

Shifting her weight onto her opposite food, she smiled tiredly, chock full of exasperation. "Eli, we can stop this now, I-"

"Sit, sit." he broke in, the smirk never fading or dulling in intensity as he patted the table, near the seat across from him.

"Eli, we can't keep going on like this."

"Like what?"

"Like we..." Clare paused, faltering a bit. Her voice was stunted of the conviction Eli wished she could have. If she wanted _him_ back, the Eli she _truly_ knew, she'd need to earn him. Claw him out from beneath the rubble of his grief and his lack of trust. She was only adding to the problem. "as if we don't know one another. You know that's just not true."

Somewhere in his mind, he had hoped she might keep the ruse up, just to keep the peace and get through the process in one piece. Apparently stubbornness could be added to her list of traits, then penned into his play.

"I sincerely have to implore you to seek help, Clare. I've never met you once in my life. I'm not sure where this notion that we have a mutual recollection of each other is coming from." His tone was even, but a sharp tinge lingered just beneath it.

"_That's not true_!" rasped Clare, her voice hushed but not enough to resist the glances from nearby students and the less than friendly librarians. Her minor outburst left her flustered, shifting nervously in her spot, her cheeks emblazoned with a rich red hue. It almost left Eli taken aback, but instead, he merely chuckled.

"Are you going to sit anytime soon? This interview is bound to be more awkward than it already is with you standing there."

Wearing an expression of defeat, Clare and her scorching red complexion sat across from him, carefully smoothing her dress down before she rested completely on the chair.

She was so demure in her movements, so graceful in the delivery of just about everything. Even her anger towards him had a majestic quality to it. As frequently as he caught himself picking out the negative qualities to the girl, the times he was noting the positive ones were twice as often.

"There we go. Much better." Eli chirped, his put-on of a good mood almost convincing him that it was in fact real. Pretending she wasn't familiar to him was becoming a bit easier, much to his relief.

Clare's expression turned wry at his enthusiasm, moving to open her messenger bag, pulling out from it a spiral notebook with a paper tucked inside. Tugging it away from the pages, she placed it down, snatching a pen and a recorder from her bag and setting them both on the table. She truly was a journalist, through and through.

Clicking the record button harshly, she released the recorder and let it rest between them, picking up her pen and uncapping it. "Tell me what the play is about, please?" she asked, all previous annoyance existent in her tone masked, only for the recording, he knew.

All of a sudden, he feared his brain had suddenly imploded, lackluster and devoid of any and all of the ideas he'd once had. Right before she clicked record, his mind had been alive with countless things to mention about the potential masterpiece. He looked to his notebook, still trying to save face despite his long silence at her question. But now his writing looked less like intelligible albeit messy scrawl and more like chicken scratch. His own thoughts had betrayed him, shutting off right when he took the moment to stare her in the eyes.

He wished they were the same comforting shade of blue he'd seen in the hospital, the ones that coaxed him to tell her his name, the same ones that managed to sparkle every time she smiled, the expression always reaching those baby blues. Her gaze almost felt tangible now and he wished for nothing more than to wrap himself in the warmth of it.

At the sight of her as she truly was, in this moment of clarity, he felt weakened. Debilitated under her gentle scrutiny.

"It- it..." he stammered, his tongue feeling like a dry obstruction in his mouth, causing him to stumble over simple vowels. Even the small task of speaking was lost on him now, reverted back to that same babbling, shaking idiot in the hospital waiting room. Except this time, she wasn't holding his hands. She wouldn't be there to yank him away from the ledge.

"It?" she pressed on, ignoring all signs of his impending anxiety attack, if she even knew it was brewing.

"It- it's a tragedy." Eli forced out, remembering at least that much from his notes.

Her head cocked a bit, leaning down at him. "...about?"

Her question left him stumped. What was it about? Was it about Clare the hero or Clare the villain? Clare who saved him or Clare who confined him to a fate he wanted to escape? What role did she play in it? How much of the inner turmoil was Clare and how much of it was him?

With questions overrunning his mind, speech wasn't even a viable option, Eli left without a means of expressing the traffic in his mind. He was spiraling in a familiar way that never felt right, the back of his neck covered in a sheen of sweat, his pulse throbbing at his temple.

Reaching forward finally, he hastily clicked the record button and released it, knowing this couldn't be on the record. This wouldn't be the interpretation Clare would create for his production. So quickly he was ruining his chances to make it perfect.

"Eli?" she pressed, and for once, he let himself feel her warmth. The voice wasn't unfamiliar at all, try as he might to convince himself that she was nothing but a new stranger. He was left drenched in the concern that painted her tone, his skin growing ashen and sickly looking the longer he chose to dwell on it.

"I can't do this right now."

Clare leaned forward in her seat a bit, placing the pen down in front of her. The interview didn't matter anymore – they both knew it. The only thing that existed was the life size elephant accompanying the space between them, draining them both of the energy to carry on as if nothing was wrong. Absolutely everything was wrong in both of their worlds, the weight of it caving in on them.

"Please talk to me." she begged, desperate for his communication, for some reassurance that the gears in his head were moving, however slowly.

Eli cleared his throat, attempting in vain to collect himself. His stomach was still a pit of acid, bile threatening to creep up his throat if he wasn't careful."It's these...pills."

"What the doctors gave you?"

For once, he acknowledged their prior knowledge of one another, nodding his head rapidly.

"I can't think with them. My thoughts are there and then they're lost. I can't keep them, and I- and I..." His stunted phrases were angering him, his hands balled up on the table, knuckles paling.

If he concentrated enough, he could feel her hands sweeping back his bangs from his clammy head, like they did _then_.

She said nothing, still waiting for him to string his thoughts together. But they never would be within reach to him, not when it came to her.

Shaking his head feebly, Eli gave in to the shaking, letting a deep tremor run through him. He didn't care who was around them, barely registering them in the present moment. It seemed Clare didn't take notice of them either, her full attention focused on the boy before her.

Every fiber of his being told him not to cry.

_Don't even tear up. _

_Haven't you cried enough for one lifetime?_

_Baby. _

_Wimp. _

_No wonder she wants nothing to do with you._

But the moisture pooled behind his eyelids before he could trap them inside, his resolve to maintain his cool breaking. Finally when the floodgates broke, he buried his head in his hands, choking back heavy sobs. The combination of his scrambled thought process and her right before him proved to be too much for him, his state of mind already fragile as it was.

He'd always be fragile, his very existence stamped with a "handle with care" sticker. He'd never been strong.

"Oh, sweetie," Clare whispered, the fond name only breaking him down further, pulling out a bit from the table. He wished he could run from the situation. He couldn't handle Clare's pity again. That was all it amounted to, and it only arrived when he was in such a distressed state. Only when he was a basket case.

Eli didn't realize she'd gotten out of her own chair until he felt arms around him, encasing him gently. Pathetically, his head dropped to her shoulder, his eyes dampening the fabric of her cotton dress. Somewhere in the mess of his cramped mind, he knew he shouldn't have succumbed to her comfort; that doing so would only further his heartbreak. It would turn the hairline fracture into an all out break, deepening the cracks and craters in the weakened organ.

Her scent drew him in – a soft vanilla he wanted to melt into, winding himself around it and soaking up every bit of tenderness it supplied. Everything about the girl cushioned his fall, no wonder he needed her so desperately.

The touch of her hand against the nape of his neck elicited a small whimper from him, so needy for her touch, anything that could keep her close to him. Though he couldn't lift his arms, he wished he could, only wanting to tuck her tightly against his side. He knew that if Clare had been his girlfriend, he would make every effort to feel her, hold her. To feel her existence in every way a person could. All he wanted was to be wrapped up in her very essence.

"Why did you leave me?" was all he could stutter out, his one true inquiry finally leaving him, his bottom lip quivering against her. He kept his head tucked against her neck, afraid to withdraw for fear that he would never relive the contact again.

As much as Eli feared the answer, what he feared more was going another day without an answer. Another night tossing and turning torturing himself with imaginings that never made much sense, and always painted Clare in the worst light possible. His own innate defense mechanisms were beginning to drive him mad, his incessant need to fill the gap with his own inner musings had led him nowhere.

Nowhere, except her arms once again.

"Eli, it's not that simple." she replied quickly, combing her fingers through his hair. She knew precisely what he was referring to, her own thoughts clearly along the same vein all along.

Jerking his head up, he finally looked at her, his cheeks wet and eyes bloodshot."I need an answer, Clare. I _need _you to tell me why. It's been driving me crazy. You can't let me keep wondering like this"

When she pursed her lips together and looked back at him with an unreadable gaze, he let his jaw fall open, nothing but desperation pouring out from his mouth.

"Please. Goddamn it Clare, _please_. You can't truly enjoy doing this to me, you can't."

Her lips parted and she leaned forward, pressing their foreheads together. "I'm afraid you won't believe me."

Eli's eyes widened a bit, baffled as to her concern. "Just- just tell me." he repeated, his patience wearing even thinner. What was left of his patience wasn't even enough to constitute as anything real, only an image of what he used to hold.

Her gaze softened once more, gathering up the right words to explain it all to him, until a voice shattered through their shared reverie, ruining the illusion of clarity they were striving to create.

"Does no one heed the no PDA rule? Keep your distance at school!" the bitchier of the two librarians snapped, having wandered close to them without either of them noticing, so wrapped up in each other. Quickly they parted, Eli moving to wipe his eyes while Clare scurried back to her seat.

"Thank you." she mumbled haughtily, muttering something about hormonal teens and the dire need for contraception as she stomped away.

Whatever small moment that had been created between the two was now successfully shattered, the chance for reconciliation gone with it. The sense of anger grew within Eli once more, noticing now how the universe was pitted against them, plotting to keep them apart at all costs.

Fighting against the current could only seem like a good idea for so long, only now coming across to him as futile. He'd never know her reason – he obviously wasn't supposed to. The curiosity would forever linger, but he knew he couldn't stand another moment in that library, sitting across from the girl that he'd give anything to love him back.

Because he'd finally realized he truly did love her, even if it tore at his insides and picked apart his pride to admit.

Gathering up his odds and ends, he shoved them into his bag and rose from his seat, fighting to keep his balance as he did.

"No! We're not- you can't go yet!"

The cold, stoic personality swept over him again in a rush, freezing out all the warmth she'd provided with her embrace. The happiness, though mixed with a bittersweet sense of regret, had been so fleeting. Eli couldn't even bear to remember that it had been there in the first place.

"You'll get your interview another day, Edwards. Give me a few days to piece it together, I'll have the basis drawn up." snapped Eli, not bothering to look back as he strode off, until he felt her tugging on his arm. Reluctantly he turned back to her, his face not betraying the inner conflict growing inside of him. She was his safety, the only sense of completeness he'd felt in a long time. And there he was, willingly walking away from her. It didn't add up, it never did.

Her azure orbs were shimmering, a moisture swimming in them that made his stomach turn. How could he be the one to make her cry?

"I didn't get to explain, I still-"

"It doesn't matter. It never mattered." He knew what he was implying in his phrasing. _We never mattered. _Though the words couldn't have been more untrue.

Relinquishing her tight grip on his arm, Eli tore himself away, making haste to the doorway, ignoring the librarians' chiding glares as he passed the circulation desk. It three days, he had to have a play prepared, a full plot summary written out and dreamed up to present to the cast and crew, along with Clare.

_The show must go on, the show must go on_, he reminded himself, the details of his tragedy becoming clearer with every step he took away from Clare. She was the root of his problems. And in his play, she'd get to see just how deeply she impacted him with her own eyes. Her legacy would forever live in his production, as the straw that broke the camel's back, the end of the line. Clare had broken him, and she'd know it without a single doubt by the curtain call.


End file.
